Anubhav Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Vikhroli, Chief CSR & Sustainability Officer, Godrej Properties in an interaction with the Industry Outlook, shares his insights on the approach of real estate industry in adopting greener practices, ESG-focused infrastructure system, and more.
Civil structures account for nearly 40 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to UNEP’s 2020 Global Status Report. The ecological footprint becomes even bigger when considering how much water and raw materials are used. In this situation, how is the real estate industry adopting greener practices in respect to the total lifecycle of a project starting with design to development and maintenance to demolition?
In the real estate value chain, it is pertinent for companies to integrate sustainable thinking across the life cycle from due diligence to final handover and customer use with its scope encompassing external stakeholders including joint venture partners, contractors and vendors. Progressive real estate companies are now crafting company level sustainability goals that cascade from the C-suite to all functions across companies with robust internal dashboards instituted to measure progress. Sustainability performance is also a key contributor to brand values and teams are translating these commitments into stakeholder communication underscoring environmentally and socially responsible delivery.
Company level focus on sustainability goals including emissions, water and waste have the potential to translate to meaningful industry and country wide positive impact. Sustained focus on Green certification targets for product portfolios and setting up Environment Management systems (EMS) and securing ISO certifications for construction sites further strengthens sustainability performance. Finally the use of technology and innovation to monitor, measure and deliver real time Green performance is also being adopted across verticals within the industry.
Implementing an efficient ESG-focused infrastructure system is vital for countries like India, it provides access to the most basic services like energy and water for the community. What should developers, investors and occupiers consider as factors while framing ESG policies?
Real estate development is a resource intensive enterprise and we need to ensure that we not only do everything to minimise damage to the environment but find ways of conserving resources and seek solutions to reverse these adverse impacts. The sector therefore requires a sustainability framework across People, Process, Partnerships, Product, Profit and Planet for a comprehensive approach towards the Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) parameters.
For companies to get started on setting up compelling sustainability targets and ESG policies,one would benefit from studying compliance in detail where recent changes such as the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) guidelines by SEBI are attempting to cover some distance through regulation. ESG policies should be further be crafted as robust channels for implementation and beyond compliance purposes only. Developers are now increasingly expected to step up their ESG policy landscape to drive stringent regimes of assessments as well as mechanisms for grievance escalation and corrective actions.
Integrating appropriate mechanisms such as implementation logs should be the mandate. Sustained investor focus can contribute to driving improvement in ESG performance across the industry. Independent ratings agencies such as the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) have robust comparison frameworks for the sector evaluating ESG policies, their implementation and external disclosure.
Residential and commercial occupiers should build on developer mandates for ‘building use’ policies that focus on translation of established green infrastructure into live/work experience, efficiency and related benefits and adherence to achieved certifications and high-performance standards.
How is Godrej Properties incorporating sustainability into its overall operations and project portfolio to align with the collective goal of attaining "net zero" ?
As one of the founding members of the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) we are committed to sectoral advancement in sustainable development and innovation. All our buildings are mandated to be a minimum of IGBC Silver rated with an aspiration of expanding our portfolio towards IGBC Gold and Platinum rated developments. 90.16% of our development portfolio across India is green certified under credible green rating systems such as IGBC, LEED and GRIHA, among others.
We regularly conduct detailed life-cycle analysis across representative geographic sites to further strengthen sustainability metrics across product development, design, procurement, operations as well as delivery. We have extended our certification process to cover the post-occupancy phase of our projects to ensure monitoring, use and sustained performance. Productivity, health, and well-being are robust outcomes of sustainable thinking in buildings. Godrej One, our headquarters building received a Platinum Certification under the IGBC health and well-being rating system.
On the operations side, we continue to augment our green spends across projects to ensure strict adherence to green building mandates and environmental mechanisms. Additionally, we also implement measures to harness renewable energy and encourage initiatives to protect the interests of local communities where we work. To consistently improve our environment as well as health and safety practices, we have initiated ISO14001:2015 Environment Management Systems across all our sites.
We are currently developing emission reduction targets to strengthen our commitment to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). To further reduce our GHG emissions, we are working to establish a climate change strategy with strengthened insight on climate-related risks. We remain deeply committed to improve our monitoring mechanisms and increase transparency across reporting platforms. We strive to create sustainable supply chains and actively participate in collaborative dialogues and Industry led interventions that include standard carbon assessments and material standards with the Bureau of Indian standards etc. Construction and demolition waste is a key area of focus where we have initiated research with peer companies to help address this complex problem.
As we solve for these challenges, we ensure the health, wellbeing, upskilling and livelihoods of our construction workers. In our CSR work, we work with communities around the country on green projects to further harness offsets which help in optimising our operational footprint. For us at Godrej Properties, integrating environmental, social and governance goals into the real estate business value chain is the right and responsible thing to do in our quest to get to net zero.
We believe that this does not contradict business viability, rather sustains and enhances it in the longer term. While getting to actual net zero is still an aspiration, we are steadily making progress to put in place systems for our roadmap to get there in a reasonable time frame.
