GRESB, a provider of environmental, social and governance (ESG) benchmarking for real assets, has launched the 2016 GRESB assessments.
GRESB provides ESG data to institutional investors with over 8.1 trillion in assets under management. Assessment results and data is used by investors and others to understand the risk/return profile of real estate and infrastructure investments.
“Investors today are looking for companies with a high ESG performance and GRESB rating,” says Nils Kok, CEO, GRESB. “In fact, from what we’ve seen, companies with GRESB ratings have higher valuations and a larger pool of interested investors. GRESB’s goal is to provide investors with the ESG information they need to make more informed investment decisions.
“In addition, the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, with a strong focus on real estate and infrastructure – and the COP 21 agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, brings increased attention to real assets. Investors increasingly need to know the extent to which their allocation to real assets is either contributing to or mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”
This year GRESB is expanding its scope to evaluate the sustainability performance of real assets with four distinct assessments – the GRESB Real Estate Assessment, the GRESB Developer Assessment, the GRESB Debt Assessment and the inaugural GRESB Infrastructure Assessment.
The global property and infrastructure industries are at the heart of the most important and far-reaching issues of our time, including urbanisation, demographic change, resource constraints, environmental impacts, and emerging technologies. The design, construction and operation of assets reflects, drives and potentially mitigates the impact of all of these issues on occupants, owners, communities and society at large.
“Standardised monitoring and benchmarking tools provide institutional investors with greater ability to monitor assets and investment managers, as we strive to reach long-term return objectives and understand the risks that could get in the way. We are excited about using GRESB’s new infrastructure framework for systematic assessment and peer benchmarking of sustainability performance for current and future investments,” said Ted Eliopoulos, CalPERS Chief Investment Officer.
