Top Three Takeaways From IMN’s ESG and Sustainability Conference
The 3rd Annual ESG & Decarbonizing Real Estate Forum (Winter) in Nashville brought together operators, investors and providers focused on supporting the Real Estate industry in their goals with respect to ESG and Sustainability. Although there were highly informative panels and great roundtable discussions around topics pertaining to decarbonization, GreenT Climate Software felt that there were three key takeaways worth highlighting:
Financial Values of Sustainability Matter: The goals around ESG and Sustainability need to be supported by a reasonable ROI and not just be cost adding measures. Practitioners are focusing on measures and highlighting financial benefits of projects to improve the environmental performance of properties. Many practitioners are targeting their budgets and efforts in markets with local regulation and targets that change the Return on Investments: In several sessions, discussion on how the onerous penalties of noncompliance changed the Return of Investment for HVAC and other measures. Due to rising insurance premiums, there were discussions regarding hardening of assets (i.e. making improvements to make assets more resilient to climate change), which may not increase value, reduce expenses or rents, but have a positive financial return for investors with respect to the insurability of the property. Additionally, there is a lot of focus on Building Performance Standards and Regulations and being proactive with improvements instead of reactive to penalties.
It Is Desirous to Move Beyond Reporting: Historically there have been discussions on how the Annual ESG Reports allow practitioners to highlight their efforts and story tell their results, but there seems to be less emphasis on the reporting and more discussion on using the data to prioritize taking actions to decarbonize the property and reduce costs. This is a shift in the data collection process and the frequency of the evaluation of the data. Sustainability Practitioners are looking for decision quality data to direct action. Payback calculations and decisioning, not just aggregate the data for reporting purposes and evaluation against commitment targets. Data is still hard to capture in an accurate automated way to act, but more practitioners are adapting to drive action beyond the ESG Report. With respect to the ESG Reports themselves, even though companies are evaluating their language for both their investor base and investor or market current Anti-ESG sentiments, they are still focused on the financial benefits of their ESG Programs and improved performance of their portfolios.
Sustainability is Accelerating: The IMN conference grew noticeably in attendance this year, the desire to connect and partner increased. This beautiful culture of collaboration extended not only peers connecting with peers but their vendor partners, cultivating the opportunities to have these connectable moments. The networking breaks were a frenzy of people meeting beyond the screen, some for the very first time, to new introductions and opportunities to collaborate. The desire to compete is not as palpable as the desire to connect at this conference. There was open discussion regarding the additional thirty plus Building Performance Standards jurisdictions that would be announced over the next twenty-four months. The overall consensus was that ESG and Sustainability are not slowing down or going anywhere. We are moving forward with speed and scale.
At GreenT Climate Software we are proud to connect and support the amazing Multifamily industry on its Sustainability Journey. We are here to support your operational sustainability goals and bring positive operational success to your portfolio through our connections with partners and operations of multifamily assets. We are so proud to attend our second IMN ESG Conference and look forward to the road ahead, however it changes. If you would like support with your desperate data and operational actions, please contact us.
