BRE, the organization responsible for the marketing and development of the BREEAM green building certification scheme, today announces its partnership with GRESB, the leading global sustainability benchmark for real estate portfolios. Collaboration between the two global organizations will promote their shared goals of advancing transparency and sustainability performance in the real estate industry.
The BREEAM family of schemes is used in more than 60 countries, with several country-specific BREEAM schemes operated across Europe. BREEAM encourages integrative design, construction, and operation that promotes low carbon, low environmental impact buildings and communities. As a partner of GRESB, BRE will also serve on the GRESB Benchmark Committee, providing strategic, commercial and technical input regarding the GRESB assessment process and related products and services.
“BREEAM is a globally-recognised sustainability standard for buildings which provides proven economic, environmental and social benefits to property owners and occupiers. It currently provides a valuable route to achieving credits under the GRESB benchmark and our hope is to extend its reach under the partnership so more clients can realise the benefits on new and existing properties. Our collaboration demonstrates that GRESB recognizes all green building standards and schemes that have credibility and rigour behind them. We look forward to a fruitful relationship,” said Gavin Dunn, Director of BREEAM.
GRESB assesses environmental, social, and governance attributes and performance of property funds around the world. In 2014, GRESB covered 637 funds representing $2.1 trillion in property value. The GRESB benchmark addresses issues including corporate sustainability strategy, policies and objectives, environmental performance monitoring, and the use of high-quality voluntary rating schemes such as BREEAM. Close to 25% of GRESB participants have one or more BREEAM-certified assets in their portfolio.
“Commercial real estate investors are increasingly demanding information on their assets and portfolios to better understand immediate sustainability risks such as flooding and exposure to energy efficiency regulation, but also to allocate capital to sustainability-related investment opportunities, such as the repositioning of inefficient assets that might otherwise become obsolete. Our partnership with BRE helps both organizations to further deliver on the joint mission to advance sustainability in the built environment to enhance and protect shareholder value,” said Nils Kok, CEO and co-founder of GRESB.
The partnership between BRE and GRESB will help improve connections between asset- and portfolio-level assessments, streamlining the flow of relevant, actionable information.
About GRESB
GRESB is an industry-driven organization committed to assessing the sustainability performance of real estate portfolios (public, private and direct) around the globe. More than 150 members, of which 47 are pension funds and their fiduciaries, jointly representing USD 8.9 trillion in assets under management, use the GRESB benchmark results throughout the investment management and engagement process, with a clear goal to optimize the risk/return profile of their real estate investments.
About BRE Group
BRE is a world leading building science centre that generates new knowledge through research. This is used to create products, tools and standards that drive positive change across the built environment. BRE helps its government and private sector clients meet the significant environmental, social and economic challenges they faces in delivering homes, buildings and communities.
BRE is owned by the BRE Trust, a registered charity. The Trust uses the profits made by the BRE companies to fund research and education that advances knowledge of the built environment. www.bre.co.uk
BRE Global
BRE Global Limited (incorporating LPCB & BREEAM) is an independent third party approvals body offering certification of fire, security and sustainability products and services to an international market. BRE Global’s product testing and approvals are carried out by recognised experts in our world renowned testing laboratories. BRE Global Limited is custodian of a number of world-leading brands including:
- LPCB for the approval of fire and security products and services, listed in the Red Books.
BREEAM the world’s leading environmental assessment method for buildings, sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de-facto measure of a building’s environmental performance.