The Aquila European Renewables Income Fund (AERIF) has been awarded a four-star Green Rating in its first annual GRESB Assessment for 2021.
The GRESB Assessment is an objective investor-driven global ESG benchmark and reporting framework assessing the performance of real estate and infrastructure funds, companies, and assets. The results provide investors with standardised data to help evaluate complex sustainability issues. GRESB is an important industry benchmark as it can help to protect shareholder value by evaluating and improving the sustainability performance of real assets, on asset level (operating assets only) and portfolio level.
In its first year of participating in the GRESB assessment, AERIF achieved a four out of a five-star rating. With an overall GRESB Score of 84 the fund scores above the GRESB average of 77 points.
At portfolio level, the rating shows a particularly strong performance in Stakeholder Engagement and Leadership compared to the peer group. At asset level, meanwhile, the rating recognises AERIF’s strong policy frameworks as well as its performance in resource and emission management including water, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy.
Ian Nolan, chair of Aquila European Renewables Income Fund PLC, says: “Given the high importance of this global assessment, we are pleased to have been awarded a 4-star GRESB rating in our first year of participation. AERIF’s objective is to provide investors with a truly diversified portfolio of renewable assets and we appreciate that our efforts are seen and valued through this objective, external review. Performing so strongly in our first year, we are even more motivated than before to growing our fund further based on our vision and ESG principles”.
The rating further demonstrates that Aquila Capital, the funds’ adviser, is well equipped with its group wide policy framework and in-house asset management to enable strong performance in stakeholder engagement, risk management and leadership in ESG. Aquila Capital will continue to improve its systems and frameworks leading to potentially even better GRESB ratings and performance in the coming years.
Established by investors in 2009, GRESB is used by more than 140 institutional investors to monitor their investments, engage with their managers and make informed decisions. Currently, the portfolios of more than 1,500 real estate companies, REITs, funds and developers and more than 700 infrastructure funds and asset operators participate in GRESB Assessments. This broad market coverage provides investors with ESG data and benchmarks for more than USD6.4 trillion worth of assets under management.
