C Change Summit brings together real estate leaders to decarbonise

ULI Europe will bring senior real estate executives to Paris this week for the latest C Change Summit as the organisation steps up efforts to scale decarbonisation across the industry.

Speaking to Real Asset Media’s Richard Betts, Sophie Chick, vice president for ESG programmes at ULI Europe, said the summit forms part of a wider four-year initiative “to speed up and scale up decarbonisation of real estate across Europe”.

She said the annual gathering is intended not just to highlight keynote speakers but to bring people together to take part in workshops that help develop practical solutions for the sector.

“So, working towards these solutions that we’re creating through the programme,” she said.

One of the main features in Paris will be the launch of the Preserve Tool, developed through the C Change programme over the past year.

Chick described it as “a tool that we’ve been working on as part of C Change for the last year. And it’s designed to quantify transition risk in a consistent way,” adding that it is “a really exciting and a very topical tool at the moment, really bringing in that business case and that financial aspect into transition risk and into that ESG world”.

Affordable housing will also feature prominently. ULI Europe will present the first outputs from its new C Change for housing programme, including a mapping exercise examining the barriers to decarbonising affordable stock.

Chick said the initiative highlights “what are the main barriers holding back this availability of decarbonised affordable housing? And then what are the intervention areas that we need to take forward to overcome these barriers?”

The agenda will include global and local perspectives. She confirmed that Lord Alok Sharma, chair of the UK Transition Finance Council and former COP26 president, will headline the event.

“He’s going to give us that global sustainability overview. I think talk about some of those political challenges that we have at the moment and coming off the back of COP,” she said.

Delegates will also hear directly from municipal leadership. Chick said ULI Europe is pleased to be welcoming Paris deputy mayor Lamia El Aaraje to discuss the city’s latest climate and planning initiatives.

Chick noted that, despite the political noise around ESG, momentum in the real estate industry remains strong.

“There was some nervousness around it. But what we’re seeing from our members is that this is carrying on regardless of the political agenda,” she said. “There might be some changing the names of it and talking about it using slightly different language. But this has to happen —particularly in Europe, I think we’re really leading in this.”

Engagement with the C Change initiative is rising, she added. “If anything, we’ve seen engagement in the programme in C Change increase over the year, which is really great. And I think it really shows that people know we need to address it. And we’re also being reminded of that with our extreme weather that we’re seeing around the world on an unfortunately regular basis.”

Richard Betts noted that Real Asset Media’s audience is increasingly seeking practical support on how to embed sustainability in investment and development strategies. Chick agreed the summit aims to provide precisely that level of actionable insight.