According to a new real estate survey, chief sustainability officer roles in the Asia Pacific region are not fading away, despite recent uncertainty over environmental policies. In fact, commitment to ESG is only intensifying.
Nearly 90 per cent of surveyed landlords and investors in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China told researchers from the US Green Building Council, North Asia Office, and CBRE that they have a “dedicated sustainability function”.
This signalled integration of sustainability into core business operations, and the results also showed a growing alignment between sustainability and financial returns.
“As activities driving financial return are given the highest priority for sustainability investment, CSOs are expected to show how they are creating value for the business,” the report said.
Some CSOs said they needed to demonstrate return on investment to get project approval, and this highlighted the “growing demand for alignment between financial targets and sustainability requirements”.
Pressure to maintain green credentials was coming from tenants, with more than 60 per cent of asset owners stating this was the case. But there was also the need to remain competitive and maintain high occupancy in assets.
What was not so well understood among the cohort was how climate risk would impact the bottom line. This was still in the early stages.
On the downside, 60 per cent of respondents did not plan to increase their sustainability teams, despite the perception that ESG needed to be enhanced, thanks to regulatory frameworks, the growth of clean energy, and the expectations of institutional investors.
An interesting observation about green buildings is that there are so many now that the green premium has all but disappeared – the imperative to remain competitive and retain tenants is now a stronger factor.
Surprisingly, 81 per cent of respondents said they have biodiversity strategies in place, but to tackle the challenge of the urban heat island effect, stronger collaboration between broad stakeholders was needed.
See the full report here.
