GRESB

If you’re decarbonising a real estate portfolio, the single biggest factor in a building’s emissions is often outside your control: the electricity grid. "Know Your Grid", a new GRESB research paper fuelled by the collective brainpower of my colleagues Parag Cameron-Rastogi (Rastogi), Chris Pyke and Emma Storm, puts a number - or rather, thousands of numbers - on what this means for emissions, buildings, and the capital allocated to decarbonising them. Link to full paper: https://lnkd.in/eFNdrGmc The short version is that by 2040, grid decarbonisation on its own cuts otherwise identical buildings annual emissions by 55% if they sit on fast-decarbonising grids, but only 10% if they sit on a slow one. Same building, same year, and the owner hasn’t lifted a finger either way. It's not surprising that building improvements on slow-grid assets alone can't quite close the gap to an unchanging fast-grid asset - but the key word is quite. On a slow grid, the most aggressive efficiency and electrification pathways we modelled come close to a fast-grid building that does nothing at all. This has direct consequences for where capital should be allocated to buildings, especially in the next few years. Buildings exposed to fast grids should take advantage of them by prioritising electrification and adding on-site generation, because their supply is getting cleaner anyway. On a slow grid, efficiency and electrification need to work together from the beginning based on existing grid emissions intensity now, and how this will evolve in the years to come. We were only able to conduct this assessment because we combined two facility-level datasets for the first time: the GRESB Real Estate Assessment and the Asset Impact plant-level power sector model. This allowed us to match buildings across 70+ countries and 800,000 asset-years with the grid supplying them. This is the first paper in a series that will get into progressively harder questions around how exactly money should be spent by building managers on behalf of investors. Well look more closely not just at what needs to be done, but what it costs, what it returns, and in what order. Stay tuned...

The EU is moving toward requiring greater transparency and comparability for data centers, including a proposed common rating scheme focused on energy and water use. See how the GRESB Data Centers Assessment can help you meet evolving expectation and show how you manage material risks and impacts with standardized, validated information.

Data center operators and developers need a credible way to communicate how material sustainability risks and impacts are being managed. The GRESB Data Center Assessment provides a sector-specific framework and standardized, validated outputs for important stakeholder conversations.

Data center permitting can raise questions around power, water, infrastructure, and community impact. The GRESB Data Center Assessment helps you bring credible, validated information to the conversation.

Scrutiny around power demand and grid interaction is growing. How can you communicate your approach with credibility? The GRESB Data Center Assessment can help you show how you manage power, grid interaction, and other material sustainability issues through standardized, validated outputs.

Generic sustainability frameworks can miss the issues that make data centers different. The GRESB Data Center Assessment addresses sector-specific risks and impacts through a framework purpose-built for data center developers and operators. Use the Data Center Assessment Explorer to understand how the issues apply to your portfolio.