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INREV North American Conference 2019 was held on the 2 October. This full-day event gave attendees greater insights into the opportunities that can be sought in the European market, as well as a basis for comparison between the European and North American landscape.

Boris Kuzmin, Investment Manager, ATP Real Estate, Zoltan Szelyes, Head of Global Real Estate Research, Credit Suisse Asset Management and Edgar Orlovskis, INREV Research and Analytics Manager, explore the latest results form the INREV indices. 

The Climate Risk Round Table 2019 addressed the ever-present topic of climate change and its associated risks including a short presentation followed by a round table discussion. 

The 2019 Nick Tyrrell Research Prize has been awarded to joint authors Felipe Carozzi and Christian A.L Hilber, London School of Economics & Centre for Economic Performance and Xiaolun Yu, London School of Economics for their paper, 'The Economic impacts of help to buy'.

Click here to view the 2019 winning submission video presentation.

The French edition of the Investor Universe Study focuses on investors domiciled in France. The study looks at real estate’s role in French institutional investment, describing the overall investment landscape as well as investigating investors’ motivations for holding real estate and the ways these are being implemented. 

40 Holborn Viaduct is a prime example of how using technology can help to enhance occupier experience, drive energy savings and optimise maintenance – all in line with our goal of developing a sustainable portfolio where the customer comes first. The building has already made a 12% reduction in energy use and is on track to achieve a 20% saving over a four year period. Health, wellbeing and productivity has also improved in the building with better regulation of temperature. Nuveen is now in the process of rolling out similar solutions to its offices and retail centres across Europe.

Prepared by Nuveen

Jarek Morawski, Head of Research and Strategy, Grosvenor and José Monsalve, Research and Analytics Analyst at INREV present the key findings of the INREV Funds Termination Study.

A report released in May 2019 by a consortium of real estate investors and academic groups called the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM) details the potential implications of global and European climate policy on long-term risk in the European commercial real estate sector. The report was funded by the European Commission.

The report of the CRREM project applies findings from natural science, economics, and finance to conclude that the current rate of emissions from the European commercial real estate sector is too high given the carbon budget available for 2050 defined by EU climate targets. In fact, the available carbon budget would be consumed by 2036, suggesting the average energy-intensity of commercial real estate is 45 percent higher than an emission pathway aligned with long-term EU climate targets.

The report has several implications for real estate investors:

• That the long-term is getting closer. Targets set for 2050 may seem far off but are only a few renovation cycles away. Major retrofits planned and completed today will in effect lock in energy- and carbon-intensities for a decade or more, given the life span of major equipment and management systems. The report implicitly states that it may therefore be prudent to set sustainability ambitions for major retrofits that are aligned with the sector carbon budget at the end of the renovation cycle.
• Tighter carbon budgets will likely accelerate innovation. As the development of environmental technologies accelerates, the energy performance gap between new buildings and newly retrofitted buildings on the one hand, and existing stock on the other hand, will grow. This may increase the risk of obsolescence for individual assets (“stranding risk”) resulting from declining tenant demand and higher operating and compliance costs.
• Carbon budgets are emerging as potentials tools for assessing and managing long-term climate risk associated with the broader transition to a low-carbon economy. Governments are using carbon budgets to define the extent of the climate problem, set policy ambitions, and define targets for different economic activities and sectors. We can assume that funds or assets that generate more carbon emissions than what their respective carbon budgets allow carry more long-term risk than those that do not. For real estate investors and managers, risk can materialise in the form of higher expected capital, operating and compliance costs, and asset depreciation.

Overall, the CRREM report highlights the need for new risk management tools to understand, assess, and monitor long-term risks in the real estate sector associated with the broader transition to a low-carbon economy. The report opens up the door to integrating commonly agreed, plausible, and scientifically-derived scenarios into the range of environmental KPIs used in the real estate industry to asses asset and fund performance. 

Prepared by Christopher Wright, chair of INREV’s ESG committee

This study examines the options that fund managers consider as the termination date of their closed end funds approach.

Nichola Peters, a partner at Addleshaw Goddard and Head of Global Investigations and FinCrime Compliance, presents on the new Anti-Money Laundering Directive coming into effect later this year.