our approach to sustainability

Need for real change

Real estate plays a crucial role in our urban lives – buildings are where we live, work and play.

Accelerating urbanization calls for an immense effort to create new buildings and optimize real estate. More importantly, it is crucial we do it right.

Because with cities’ evolving skylines come towering problems. Real estate accounts for 37 % of global carbon emissions and is putting future generations at risk. And it’s often seen as simply an asset, ignoring the real needs of people who actually use buildings.

Sustainability as part of our investments

Our deep knowledge curve and scaling solutions enable us to identify areas where we can make the most significant impact.

The Nrep Delivery Model is Nrep’s framework developed to future-proof our investments. It encompasses our sustainability purpose and vision translated into defined targets, providing clear guidance and methodologies that support decision making from screening through the entire asset ownership period and exit. 

The key component of Nrep’s delivery model focuses on climate change in line with our science-based emission reduction targets and dedication to minimize transitional and physical climate risks. In addition, Nrep’s Delivery Model sets out a holistic framework, additionally focusing on e.g., circularity, supply chain, business conduct and positive impacts on people, whether that being our suppliers, tenants or the communities in which we operate.

Our Delivery model consists of three overarching tools and frameworks: 

– Sustainable Due Diligence (SDD): Our SDD framework guides the mandatory sustainability analysis for investment cases, which are presented to the Investment Committee. It includes a detailed assessment of sustainability risks and value creation opportunities.

– Sustainable Development Performance Standard (SDPS): For new builds and retrofits, SDPS ensures projects live up to Nrep’s requirements related to decarbonization, certifications and further sustainability targets. Design needs to be aligned with the leading holistic sustainability and environmental certification schemes, rated LEED Gold, BREEAM Very Good or DGNB Gold certified at minimum and have design-stage life cycle assessment (LCA) in place.

– Sustainable Action Plans Standing Assets (SAPSA). SAPSA ensures Nrep’s standing assets undergo transformation and sustainability improvements during ownership

Earth shots map our road towards the future

The Earth Shots projects in logistics and residential explore new ways of building more sustainable buildings with significantly lower operational and embodied emissions. The name Earth Shots is derived from moonshot – an ambitious and ground-breaking project, which is undertaken without the assurance of short-term benefit.

The objective is to test innovative solutions which can help us understand and learn more about decarbonization in real estate, learnings from which can be applied in our wider portfolio.

Transforming our standing assets for the future

Existing buildings are a large part of the Nrep portfolio, and the emissions performance of many of these can be improved.

A top-down estimate of Nrep’s current portfolio shows that to reach Nrep’s anticipated SBTi commitment, would require a significant investment to transform more than 300 assets. The direct benefit of brown-to-green investment, mainly lower energy bills, goes to the tenant, but a longer term view brings a different perspective.

Financing costs will most likely be lower due to EU taxonomy alignment, lenders’ focus on decarbonization and access to brown-to green funds. Greener buildings attract blue-chip tenants who are committed to lowering their CO2-emmissions and when it comes to sale, we have seen CO2-concious assets commanding a higher price.