Retail property leads the way in tackling carbon emissions
Retail property has seen a 17.6% drop in carbon emissions over the past year, the biggest fall across UK real estate.
This compares with a 7% drop for offices and a 6.2% decrease for logistics. The findings come from ESG data specialist Deepki’s latest index and are based on carbon emissions per real estate unit.
Taking offices, logistics, retail and hotels together, the combined drop is 6.8%.
Retail property has seen a 17.6% drop in carbon emissions over the past year, the biggest fall across UK real estate.
This compares with a 7% drop for offices and a 6.2% decrease for logistics. The findings come from ESG data specialist Deepki’s latest index and are based on carbon emissions per real estate unit.
Taking offices, logistics, retail and hotels together, the combined drop is 6.8%.
Of the six real estate sectors reviewed, only hotels saw a rise in average CO2 emissions – 54.3 kgCO2eq/m2 per unit in 2023 compared with 52.5 kgCO2eq/m2 in 2022, a rise of 3.4%.
Housing performed significantly better, showing a 13.2% fall.
Deepki said one key reason for the fall in emissions was that average final energy consumption across the UK real estate sector has fallen by 2.86% between 2022 and 2023.
Retail has seen the biggest fall in energy consumption of the six sectors reviewed, down by 13.2%, followed by the housing sector, down 10.1%. However, offices saw only a 2% decline and logistics 1.25%, while the average final energy consumption per real estate unit in the UK hotel sector increased by 9.5%.
Lindsay Taylor, head of UK delivery at Deepki, said: “The findings show that key typologies across commercial real estate in the UK are embracing the path to net zero and moving in the right direction.
“Measures that are being implemented to improve the carbon footprint of assets through greater energy efficiency – such as improving insulation and ensuring better regulation of equipment such as lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning so that they are in tune with use patterns and seasons – are starting to pay dividends, although we must bear in mind the effect of the climate itself.”
Deepki launched the first publicly available European benchmark measuring real estate’s environmental performance in late 2022. This was a response to the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities, first published in 2020 to combat greenwashing and help investors make informed sustainable investment decisions.
Under the EU taxonomy, buildings in the top 15% of the national or regional building stock in terms of primary energy intensity will be considered sustainable investments and serve as a benchmark for the entire sector.
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