Public Consultation on Technical Guidance for the Accounting and Reporting of Financed Emissions from Real Estate Operations is now open!

In 2021, PCAF (Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials), CRREM (Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor), and GRESB initiated a collaborative effort to provide guidance to banks and investors on accounting and reporting of financed GHG emissions from real estate operations. The Technical Guidance offers additional specifications to PCAF's Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry on a range of technical, data, and standards issues relating to GHG from real estate.

Main clarifications and key recommendations included in this technical paper are:

• Differentiation between corporate GHG accounting and accounting of financed emissions;
• Differentiation between GHG accounting for reporting and for other purposes (e.g., transition risk management);
• Clear definitions for GHG emissions from real estate and differentiation of various categories, including a review of operational carbon vs. embodied carbon in the real estate sector;

• Application of the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard for real estate;
• The importance of capturing all relevant emissions via the whole-building approach, where whole building = base building + tenant spaces;
• Clarification on emissions Scope attribution for various financial actors and boundaries between tenant and landlord emissions; and
• Recommendations for the application of market- and location-based emissions methods, estimation of incomplete data, handling of energy flux measurement, floor space measurement, as well as quality assurance and verification.

We invite all interested stakeholders to provide feedback on the draft Technical Guidance in a public consultation starting May 25 and running until June 28. The draft Technical Guidance may be accessed here. Responses to the public consultation are collected via the online survey only.

About PCAF

PCAF is a global, industry-led initiative of financial institutions that work together to develop and implement a harmonized approach to assess and disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with loans and investments, known as financed emissions. Currently, over 200 financial institutions have committed to the initiative. In November 2020, PCAF published the first-ever Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for Financial Industry, which covers the financed emissions of loans and investments in commercial real estate, mortgages, and various other asset classes. PCAF collaborates with several organizations, institutions, and coalitions, including CDP, the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), and the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA).

Contact:  info@carbonaccountingfinancials.com

About CRREM

The Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM) initiative has derived decarbonization pathways that translate the ambitions of the Paris Agreement (to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century) into regionally- and property-type-specific trajectories against which real estate assets and portfolios can benchmark themselves. The pathways and the developed free-ware tool can be used to derive quantitative figures regarding “transition risk” (in this case, the risk of assets being stranded due to regulatory incompliance or market obsolescence). The non-for-profit-initiative is supported by the EU commission, Laudes Foundation as well as APG, PGGM, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM).

Contact: julia.wein@iioe.at

About GRESB

Mission-driven and investor-led, GRESB is the environmental, social and governance (ESG) benchmark for real assets. It works in collaboration with the industry to provide standardized and validated ESG data to the capital markets. The GRESB 2021 Real Estate benchmark covered more than 1,500 property companies, real estate investment trusts (REITs), funds, and developers. Its coverage for infrastructure includes more than 700 infrastructure funds and assets. Combined, GRESB represents over USD 5.7 trillion in real asset value. More than 130 institutional investors constituting over USD 45 trillion in assets under management use GRESB data to monitor their investments, engage with their managers, and make decisions that lead to a more sustainable real asset industry. The GRESB Foundation – an independent, non-profit foundation – owns and governs the GRESB Standards upon which the GRESB Assessments are based.

Contact: gresb.com/contact