Here’s How The World’s Biggest Property Investors Are Nudging You To Save The Planet
A set of tools backed by the world’s largest pension funds has been launched to help real estate owners work out how to reduce carbon emissions enough to slow down global warming.
The Carbon Real Estate Risk Monitor is a research project funded by the European Union alongside a host of the world’s largest pension funds: the $1 trillion Norges Bank Investment Management, the $1.4 trillion Japanese Pension Investment Fund, the $578B APG and $273B PGGM of the Netherlands, and Canada’s $45B real estate investor Ivanhoé Cambridge.
One of the tools shows how much a typical real estate asset in different markets around the world will need to cut carbon emissions in order to hit United Nations targets of limiting the world’s temperature increase to 2 degrees celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) between now and 2050. The world would heat by 3.8 degrees celsius in the next 30 years if current policies continue, according to the United Nations.
The tool shows which markets have the most to do in terms of limiting emissions and what the sector as a global whole has to do in order to meet climate targets.
This data is important for another tool, which allows asset owners to input the carbon emissions of buildings in their portfolio and work out how quickly they would need to cut these emissions in order for their building to comply with local and international regulations on reducing output.
The tool allows owners to identify the point at which their assets would become “stranded” if they do nothing to improve their emissions performance, meaning the building would become unlettable under national regulations, or might start to face a carbon tax because its emissions are too high. It can calculate the level of carbon tax based on current pricing and regulations.
