ESG & REAL ESTATE
Vinitha Kannambroth, IFM Head South Region, Embassy Services Pvt Ltd began the session sharing her views. "Today investors are increasingly eager to align their portfolios with businesses that are ESG driven. Although ESG is a collective pursuit, it is also subjective to nature. Different organisations with different facets of business have different aspirations and goals when it comes to ESG.” Jiji Thomas, Head – Operations, Nucleus Office Parks concurred, “Nucleus Office Park acquires running assets and we commit ourselves to reducing 15% energy and carbon emissions through three prompt approaches. Firstly, operational measurements and control are achieved through LEED certifications, second is to identify the potential areas of energy savings and lastly by using renewable energy across the platforms. In terms of governance, we have created policies for a positive socio-economic impact.” Niranjan Khatri, Founder i-Sambhav said, “The real-estate industry makes buildings, but they don’t give value addition to their clients by sharing ideas or bringing elements of plug-and-play for future waste management and future installation of solar etc. and many other things. Adopting ESG is a good start for real estate companies.” Jagdish Balaram, Head - Netzero Consulting Division, The Groundwater Company added, “One can increase water generation, decrease water wastage and avoid flooding by leveraging the power of technology. The scientific study includes understanding the nature, real-time monitoring and analysing the land characteristics that can help plan the future development in terms of availability of water, the energy required, and so on.” K Raman, Director - Market Development, GBCI stated, “Today, sustainability has become the core value of any organization or development. This is a good sign that we are moving in the right direction. The green building certification helps in financing the ESG score. For transparency of data, we have also started an online platform to track the performance of the buildings and to integrate some of the ESG frameworks.” THE CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES Jiji Thomas shared. “One of the biggest challenge of implementing ESG in a commercial real estate is to integrate more than 100 occupiers ESG goals with that of the company. Also, in terms of the contracting models between the real-estate company and the tenants, the utility costs are passed on to the tenants without any incentive for saving the energy, water or waste. Also, some occupiers are happy to pay extra for renewable energy, others might not.” Vinitha Kannambroth added, “The occupiers are now asking for EV charging points in parking and even government regulations require EV charging station in the buildings. However, the population of EV vehicles still remains very low in the country.” Niranjan Khatri commented, “Renwable energy is the most important factor to achieve our net zero goals. But, it is not about solar photovoltaic alone, the solar thermal energy is not being utilized on a scale in sun-drenched country like ours. We are throwing terawatts of energy down the drain. Additionally, in India we generate 1.3mn ton of cow manure and this has not been leveraged at all.” Jagdish Balaram shared, “The current rainwater harvesting is flawed in nature. When there is more rain, the rain water harvesting is supposed to send more water to the ground, but we see it overflowing. Within earth there are aquifers that can hold hundreds of litters of water. But are we leveraging that?” K Raman- If you see the entire LEED ratings we account for energy, water, waste, the entire human experience the indoor air quality, and the carbon footprints that are the basic things. Every five years we upgrade the standards so the building or the facilities are hyper formic. We need to change with times and be mindful of our use of resources.”
Tags : ESG Real Estate Vinitha Kannambroth IFM Head South Region Embassy Services Pvt Ltd Jiji Thomas Head – Operations Nucleus Office Parks Niranjan Khatri Founder i-Sambhav Jagdish Balaram Head - Netzero Consulting Division The Groundwater Company K Raman Director - Market Development GBCI