Prominent real estate actors collaborate on ESG efforts
A new, free, and open-source ESG reporting template for the entire real estate industry value chain is about to be established. The template aims to ensure that ESG reporting in the real estate sector becomes transparent, concrete, and comparable in the future.
A group of leading players in the real estate industry have joined forces to establish a free, open-source ESG reporting template for the entire real estate industry value chain. The project is called Real ESG - The Real Estate Reporting Framework, and its goal is to ensure that reporting in the real estate industry becomes transparent, concrete, and comparable.
The project is supported by AKF, Balder Denmark, BUILD, Danica Properties, Danske Bank, DEAS, Deloitte, Djøf Advokat, EjendomDanmark, Molio, Realkredit Denmark, Simiab, and Thylander, with support from the philanthropic organization Realdania.
"We need to reduce our climate footprint and ensure a healthy social development. Therefore, we need standardized methods to measure it. Our footprint as an industry is significant, but when we collectively take action, as in this project, we can make a big difference," explains Jonathan Leonardsen, Sustainability Manager at Balder Denmark.
The ambition is for the emissions, reductions, and other data points of the actors to be presented, calculated, and communicated in the same way. It is only when the efforts of the actors can be benchmarked that healthy competition arises to reduce the climate footprint.
A project benefiting the entire value chain
The reporting template will make it easier, faster, and cheaper to create an ambitious ESG report, so each actor does not have to spend time, money, and energy creating their own reporting template.
"A standardized ESG reporting is the key to driving change in the industry. With a common framework, we can increase transparency, compare data, and share knowledge, which can put pressure on ourselves, as well as on our value chains and collaborators in the work towards a more sustainable construction and real estate industry," states Christian Gjessing Bruun, ESG & Sustainability Manager at AKF.
The project's focus is particularly on standardized data points that make it easy for property companies to report their ESG efforts. Another focus point is simple definitions, so that property companies use identical calculation principles.
The primary target audience of the project is property owners, but the goal is for the project to be practically applicable to the entire real estate industry value chain, including developers, contractors, and advisors.
Therefore, the project team will also collaborate with relevant organizations, experts, and industry professionals in the development of the tools.
"ESG data is already important and will become even more important in the future. Lenders, investors, and other stakeholders have healthy, justified, and ambitious expectations for ESG data in the real estate industry. Therefore, it is also evident that we collaborate to develop an open-source reporting template that benefits the entire industry and contributes to making ESG data comparable," says Christian Haaber Westergaard Nielsen, Director and Head of ESG at Thylander.
The first part of the project is expected to be released in the beginning of 2024 via EjendomDanmark and Molio.
(Update 27.02.24: Find the tool here)