Clemens Brenninkmeijer, head of sustainability at Redevco, outlines how the group has developed its own broad impact framework. Interview by Richard Betts.

Making the built environment more sustainable has long been on Redevco’s agenda. The privately held real estate management company has committed to make its entire portfolio net-zero carbon by 2040. More recently, it has focused on biodiversity and nature, collecting data on green areas and roofs, tracking water use and measuring waste generated during construction, as well as focusing on social impact and wellbeing.

Here, Clemens Brenninkmeijer, head of sustainability, discusses the evolution of Redevco’s sustainability strategy.

Redevco has just published its 17th Responsible Investment Report. How has this evolved over time?

The evolution of the report has been in line with the evolution of sustainability as a whole. The earlier editions focused on what we were doing as a company, trying to balance people, planet and profit. Now it has become more sophisticated, going into detail on what is happening at asset level.

BREEAM was the main benchmark for environmental performance for a long time. It was a hugely valuable programme for the majority of the past decade to understand what was performing well and to guide our decision-making about future-proofing our assets. It still gives a holistic view of an asset’s performance, including biodiversity, health and wellbeing, and circularity.

So, we’ve always had an integrated perspective, but over the past few years, we have developed our own impact framework, focusing on energy and emissions, but also on biodiversity, nature, and social value.

This framework was based on a double materiality assessment we carried out in 2023. Our activities have become more deliberate and detailed, and our reporting has mirrored this shift. It is great to see what we can achieve across our entire AUM, but also on individual assets.

Can you give examples of this shift in focus?

Sustainability has to be an end-to-end exercise. This has always been our motto and, until now, our focus has been on reducing emissions, which remains a key topic. As climate change intensifies, adaptation is becoming more important. In the past, biodiversity was about putting beehives or insect hotels on the roof of a building; that ticked the BREEAM box and got you the credits.

Now it’s about green roofs and gardens and planting trees to facilitate shading and water absorption, making the site more attractive and resilient, but also helping with air pollution. All these things are interlinked. We learn from every project and use that knowledge for other projects.

One example is The Leaf shopping centre in Ternat in Belgium, where every tenant has signed a green lease and every roof is green.

In Bordeaux, we have transformed an abandoned industrial site into a pleasant pedestrian district in the heart of the city.

In the James Street development we are currently doing in London, there will be a substantial rooftop garden for office occupiers, and a green wall will be added to the facade to improve air quality and attract insects and birds.

How do you make the investment case for sustainability and show it delivers better value?

This is the crux with a lot of sustainability topics: making the link to value as explicit as possible. Depending on the asset type and location, it plays into the business case.

If you strongly believe that biodiversity will promote occupiers’ health and wellbeing, evidence suggests it leads to better productivity levels and lower absenteeism, so there is value to be found.

At James Street, we truly believe the rooftop garden will make it a stronger commercial proposition and yield real benefits. For us, it has always been a very intentional strategy.

‘We strongly believe biodiversity can promote occupiers’ health and wellbeing, and research suggests it leads to better productivity levels and lower absenteeism, so there is value to be found.’

Clemens Brenninkmeijer, Redevco

The business case for green roofs on out-of-town retail parks might be less immediately obvious, but we think it is the right thing to do, and enhancing the retail park makes it more attractive for customers wanting to shop there.

Does it translate into higher rents? Maybe not immediately, at least not explicitly, but it makes the asset more resilient, maintains the value, and it keeps customers coming back.

We are launching a new report on biodiversity in this issue. How do you see this from your point of view as an investor and asset manager?

We work with annual asset business plans in which the focus has broadened to include biodiversity and nature as an integral part of our strategy. We have 57 different biodiversity actions spread across 46 assets, from water management and capture, to increasing green areas and species diversity.

In our development projects, we aim to reduce soil sealing by using permeable materials to allow water to seep through, instead of sealing off the soil with thick areas of asphalt or concrete.

Biodiversity action plans are presented at the investment committee stage; they are not an afterthought, but are included and budgeted for.

In our next Responsible Investment Report, we will be able to showcase some of the projects that are in progress now.

Redevco has been a leader in including biodiversity, but how are other companies doing?

It is hard to make sweeping generalisations. We are glad to see that many of our peers take the topic of biodiversity very seriously and we hope to be considered as part of this group.

It helps that some countries, like the UK, have made biodiversity a legal requirement. The UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain legislation mandates a 10% improvement in biodiversity for new developments in England. So, some companies in the UK are very advanced because of the legislation that is in place.

In Belgium, too, it is important to include biodiversity and nature in the planning application process.

It is being embedded more structurally across Europe, so in years to come, developers, investors and managers will not be able to get around it. There is a growing realisation that it makes the built environment more pleasant and attractive, and it also slows down climate change. We’re all making progress.

Carbon pricing is an interesting element. How is this influencing decisions in asset management and discussions with your clients?

There’s the theoretical aspect and the practical implementation.

We started with an embodied-carbon approach, challenging our teams to be deliberate in the choices we make with the design teams to reduce the impact of the materials we use.

The strategy is intended to incentivise choices about lower-carbon materials and encourage the use of recycled and bio-based materials, including for insulation, as well as mass timber rather than carbon-intensive materials.

This is helpful for reducing embodied carbon, but also has health and wellbeing benefits for occupiers and a positive impact on the commercial side. All these aspects are linked.

As to the practical implementation, for one client, we’re starting to apply an internal carbon fee in projects that are currently at the design phase or under construction, but we haven’t finished the first project where this fee is being applied.

With other clients, we use a shadow price of carbon. We do the calculations and show the clients, then it’s up to them to decide whether to charge a fee and use the money to invest in lower-carbon materials or to purchase carbon credits.

It is a work in progress, and over the next couple of years, we’ll start to have some interesting cases to show the impact of the carbon fee, whether it has resulted in a lower embodied-carbon footprint compared with business as usual.

 By thinking about it early in the process, making the right choices, really good results can be achieved to create efficient buildings that perform well over time, with close to zero emissions in operation, which is where we want to get to.

How does technology come into this?

One aspect relates to the data side of things, enabling us to track and measure and take decisions accordingly.  The sensors and smart meters we have in our buildings feed through energy-consumption data that we can analyse to make action plans or to reduce consumption further.

Other aspects of this are also tech-related, such as operational energy-efficiency improvements. Artificial intelligence algorithms drive more efficient installations through building management systems.

In most of the buildings we manage, our tenants are in the driving seat. It has been more challenging to engage on the retail real estate side than with offices. In James Street, we are experimenting with a lot of tech: an integrated app will be available for the building – not only to facilitate practical functions such as meeting-room bookings and reporting issues to the facilities manager, but also to foster greater interaction and engagement among tenants.

We’re continuously evolving our approach, learning from each asset to refine and enhance the experience.