Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, ESG topics were steadily making their way to the top of forward-thinking stakeholders’ agendas in commercial real estate. With the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak being felt across the sector and the world today, different views on how ESG performance would be prioritised in commercial real estate going forward in the immediate and the longer term are emerging. We thought this would be a good opportunity to share what we have been learning on the ground regarding ESG topics before and after the arrival of the COVID-19 outbreak, especially from our experience working and exchanging ideas with our partners and customers who are ESG practitioners in the field.

The Committee on Climate Change ( CCC) advised in 2019, that the UK should be aiming for net zero emissions by 2045-2050 in order to be compatible with the1.5ºC Paris Agreement goal.

Its recommendations were:

• For the UK, a new target: net-zero greenhouse gases by 2050 (up from the existing emissions reductions target of 80% from 1990 levels by 2050);
• For Scotland, a net-zero date of 2045, 'reflecting Scotland’s greater relative capacity to remove emissions than the UK as a whole';
• For Wales, a 95% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, reflecting it having 'less opportunity for CO2 storage and relatively high agricultural emissions that are hard to reduce'.

But how to get there and why is it proving not to be so easy?

39% - this is a figure the real estate sector knows well too well. And this must change.

According the UN’s Global Status Report, the built environment makes up approximately 39% of the global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. In order to be on track to meet global climate ambitions set forth in the Paris agreement, we need to see a 30% reduction by 2030. Global buildings sector energy demand rose 7% from 2010 to 2019, so drastic action is needed.

In the context of GRESB 2020 submission deadline extended by 1 month (to August the 1st 2020) and with the help of the enhanced Fabriq GRESB module, real estate sustainability practitioners are well equipped to participate in this year's global benchmark reporting. As most sector experts know, GRESB announced at the 2019 results event that they had decided to bring a series of changes to 2020 reporting. So, what are the main changes for GRESB in 2020?

If anyone was to tell me 3 weeks ago that the whole of world of work and play would be turned upside down due to an unseen global enemy, I would have strongly recommended they watched better sci-fi movies. Even by my film standards, that scenario made for a very unlikely narrative. Looking at the world now, the reality seems to beat the script. This Coronavirus crisis has hit all sectors of the economy - locally, regionally, globally - and impacted all of our lives in an unprecedented way.

As a technology company, aiming to significantly reduce climate change by connecting and optimising the world’s buildings, I have tried to look at some positive aspects on how this crisis is impacting PropTech and the real estate sector at large: