Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Green Building Council has developed a new product designed to help organizations meet reporting requirements and sustainability goals related to emissions, energy, water and waste across real estate portfolios.
- Perform, part of the USGBC’s Arc platform for tracking building and real estate portfolio performance, facilitates “incremental improvements across all owned, occupied or managed assets,” allowing users to set and meet customized targets, implement strategies and report progress to stakeholders, USGBC said in a news release Wednesday.
- The tool aims to bridge the gap between an organization’s sustainability targets and actionable, measurable outcomes, USGBC said.
Dive Insight:
The Perform launch follows a joint call to action by the USGBC and other green building organizations on the need for clearer, industry-specific standards to advance building decarbonization. Their paper, released Tuesday, says existing systems like Energy Star and GRESB, formerly known as the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, while effective, are not industry-specific and prevent clear and consistent measurements, benchmarking and reporting. Challenges involved in decarbonizing buildings include disaggregated ownership, long building lifespans and specific characteristics of each building, such as occupants and intensity of use, that influence its performance, the paper says.
Of the 1,977 publicly listed companies tracked by the NewClimate Institute, at least 1,750 have net-zero targets, up from 769 in December 2020, according to its 2024 Net Zero Stocktake report released in September. However, corporate net-zero commitments have not meaningfully improved the quality or credibility of many net-zero strategies, NewClimate’s report says. Perform seeks to fill that void, according to USGBC’s news release.
Perform offers guidance to help organizations develop decarbonization plans, goals and strategies; technical support for existing building portfolios; tools to measure performance; and third-party verification via Green Business Certification Inc. The goal is to advance building sustainability “regardless of [building] type or starting point,” Peter Templeton, USGBC’s president and CEO, said in the release. Perform also can track a real estate portfolio’s performance across a broader set of environmental, social and resilience metrics, USGBC said.
“As part of PERFORM, we are expanding our partnerships with Schneider Electric, ClimateFirst, Carbonsight, and Kode Labs to collaborate on data exchange, streamline portfolio-level data and introduce new portfolio-level tools that drive improvement,” Sarah Zaleski, chief products officer at USGBC and GBCI, said in a statement.
USGBC and GBCI also plan to strengthen their partnerships with Measurabl to enhance data-sharing and with GRESB, the real estate investment trust association Nareit, and the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, the release said.
The call to action, Building Transition: Financing Market Transformation, outlines strategies to broaden sustainable finance and decarbonization efforts, moving beyond just top-tier assets that are already engaged in green building activities. The call for scaling up green finance mirrors a JLL report released last week. JLL noted that the proportion of real estate debt issuance linked to sustainability has declined in the last two years, with insufficient capital allocated to building performance.
While premium office properties have broadly adopted green practices, the volume of Grade C properties “is far less engaged,” the building transition paper notes. As a result, financial instruments based on prevailing green building frameworks are likely to direct capital and impact only to a certain subset of the built environment, leaving others behind, it says.
“Billions of dollars are flowing into green buildings. But it needs to be much, much broader. It can’t be just top-notch properties. It can’t just be Class A offices in major metro areas,” Paul Mathew, senior fellow for sustainable finance at USGBC, said in an interview. “That’s why in this particular call to action, we focus on … the need for better frameworks that countries, typically governments, develop for what’s considered green. … And we need to focus on not just acquiring or selling the greenest buildings, but really helping all buildings on their journey toward sustainability.”
“It’s not just about financing, though,” Mathew said. “There are definitely some non-financial barriers” to decarbonization. Echoing an insight from another USGBC report on commercial building decarbonization, released last December, Mathew noted that obtaining organizational buy-in is key.
The report recommends that building owners and operators focus on key performance indicators that matter the most to investors, including energy intensity, carbon intensity, water usage and waste reduction measures; adopt established disclosure methods to ensure consistency across projects and portfolios; regularly update disclosures to reflect ongoing improvements; verify building performance across the building life cycle; and obtain third-party certifications from recognized bodies like LEED, BREEAM and Green Star.
When seeking green financing, “building operators should work with their teams to understand and obtain as much building level data as possible, and then be prepared to provide lenders with the necessary information to [get] more attractive rates,” Nidhi Baiswar, senior director of global sustainability and climate leadership at JLL, said in an email.
Building management systems can help operators track performance metrics in real time, allowing proactive adjustments and maintenance, the paper suggests. Building management systems, alongside smart meters, can help building owners and operators “capture data more accurately around energy, waste and water use,” JLL’s Baiswar said.
