Thoughts

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GRESB Infrastructure Survey: What is it?

Thoughts

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    EVORA

EVORA is now entering its seventh year of helping entities produce GRESB Real Estate Survey submissions, and with each passing cycle we have accrued more expertise, expanded our client base, and become leaders in the field. Last year we provided comprehensive support to 26 funds and general support to many others, and this year the figure is set to get even higher as we gain greater recognition for our expertise.

But GRESB offers more than just the Real Estate Survey, and for 2018 we have expanded our scope of services to include the GRESB Infrastructure Survey.


What is the GRESB Infrastructure Survey?

Much like its real estate equivalent, the GRESB Infrastructure Survey is an investor-driven assessment of ESG (Environmental-Social-Governance) performance for entities.

Much of the content is also very similar, however the setup of the Infrastructure Survey is quite different from that of GRESB Real Estate, as it is broken down into two sub-surveys: 1) the Fund Assessment and 2) the Asset Assessment.

The Fund Assessment is a relatively small element of the overall survey, and focuses on ESG policies and principles, persons responsible for ESG issues, and the monitoring and mitigation of ESG risks, at the entity level.

Meanwhile, it is the Asset Assessment that is broken down into the familiar Management, Policy & Disclosure, Risks & Opportunities, Monitoring & EMS, Stakeholder Engagement, Performance Indicators, and Certification & Awards modules, albeit with differences in the questions themselves and the distribution of points compared to GRESB Real Estate. Additional content includes questions relating specifically to biodiversity and air pollutants in the Performance Indicators section, whilst there is for example less focus on certification.

An optional Resilience module has also been introduced for GRESB Real Estate and GRESB Infrastructure in 2018 – you can read more about it here.


Asset Assessments – Weighted Asset Average

You are free to submit a standalone Fund Assessment without asset-level evaluation if you wish. However, to get an overall GRESB Infrastructure score you must also complete the Asset Assessment for at least 25% of your portfolio (usually weighted by GAV). Furthermore, there is an advantage to completing Asset Assessments for as many assets as possible, as your scores are collated into a Weighted Asset Average (WAA) where assets that did not complete an Asset Assessment score zero.

Your WAA is worth 70% of the final GRESB score, with the Fund Assessment making up the other 30%. A simple example calculation is provided below:

GRESB Infrastructure Survey - WAA table

Combined with an example Fund Assessment score of 76, the overall GRESB score would be:

(56   x  70%)   +   (76  x   30%)   =   62

Which represents:

(WAA Score x Asset Assessment Weighting) + (Fund Score x Fund Assessment Weighting) = Overall Score

The GRESB Infrastructure Survey is comprehensive in its coverage of ESG content, whilst also allowing a wide range of infrastructure assets, from airports to schools to toll roads to windfarms, to be compared. ESG issues matter for all forms of built infrastructure, and GRESB provides an ideal platform to meet investor and public demand for improved sustainable performance.


If you think GRESB Infrastructure might be for you, then get in touch and our team of experts will be happy to help.

 


GRESB Premier PartnerAs a GRESB Real Estate Premier Partner, we are perfectly positioned to provide GRESB support. View our official Premier Partner profile.

We can work with you to complete the submission and understand your scoring, as well as develop a sustainability plan that will improve your future GRESB performance and align with your organisation’s key environmental objectives.