If humanity is to have any hope of reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals, tackling emissions from the built environment has to be a top priority. But even for investors who are committed to finding solutions to this challenge, decarbonisation is easier said than done. Navigating the various standards and guidance developed across different sectors and different geographies can be difficult. Terminology can be confusing. And there’s still not enough focus on embodied carbon. All of this makes it difficult for investors to evaluate and compare the carbon performance of their assets.

To help navigate some of this complexity, we have developed A Spectrum of Decarbonisation (modelled on Bridges’ earlier Spectrum of Capital). It allows us to map real estate assets into one of four categories, depending on how their carbon performance compares with a globally-accepted benchmark: the Science-Based Targets. Crucially, it also lays out some practical steps – for both embodied and operational carbon – that can be taken to improve performance. The ultimate goal is for buildings to be ‘True Zero’: i.e. zero emissions across their whole lifecycle, without the need for offsets.

Our team explains some of these ideas in more detail in this video:

In thinking about this Spectrum, we have benefited hugely from the expertise and guidance of our investors, a number of whom have been kind enough to share their own challenges and solutions with us.

Our hope is that by publishing it, we can spark more conversations like these. To accelerate the pace of decarbonisation, we will need more innovation and more collaboration. So we’ll be talking to more pioneers in this area over the coming months. Watch this space!

You can read our Spectrum in full by clicking on the picture below. We’d love to know what you think!

Click to read A Spectrum of Real Estate Decarbonisation