World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) has convened over 20 Green Building Councils (GBCs) to ramp up our collective efforts to scale finance for the transition to a sustainable built environment through a new Sustainable Finance Taskforce.
Supporting the launch and work of the Taskforce are Foster & Partners, a leading global architectural firm, Saint Gobain, one of the world's largest manufacturers of energy efficient building products and Skanska, a major international contractor and developer.
The Sustainable Finance Taskforce aims to foster strategic collaborative and direct exchange between leaders and stakeholders across the built environment and supply chain, including the financial sector.
In the construction and real estate sectors, overcoming these barriers requires connecting actors of the built environment along the whole supply chain. This especially requires connecting financial institutions such as banks, investors and insurers, with built environment actors such as architects, manufacturing companies, or developers. Find out more about sustainable finance here.
Our industry needs to better understand climate related risks. Real estate is a major asset class accounting for two-thirds of global real assets and is subject to both physical and transition risks. Construction and real estate activities are at risk of a changing climate and environment.
Industry also needs to tackle the built environment's impact on our climate and environment. The built environment has a significant impact on our planet accounting for 37% of energy related emissions and being responsible for a significant share of materials extraction, waste production and water consumption.
Julie Emmrich, Sustainable Finance Lead, WorldGBC, said:
"Financial institutions are essential to help drive global and systemic change to a sustainable economy and society. Awareness of this is growing; and we see the sector is increasingly targeting social and environmental goals with their products and investments.
"However, while sustainability targets, claims and strategies ramp up, more work is needed to ensure sustainability practices in the finance sector have an impact on the real economy. That's why we've launched the Sustainable Finance Taskforce, together with our Green Building Councils and partners."
The Sustainable Finance Taskforce navigates and guides proliferating ESG frameworks
Financial actors looking to green their portfolios seek voluntary reporting frameworks and data to comply with environmental objectives. As a result, the ESG ecosystem has quickly expanded. However, there is a risk that ESG reporting practices are disconnected from sustainability realities on the ground' and, coupled with a lack of data, this can lead to confusion and even greenwashing.
Our network has been at the forefront of sustainable finance for many years, using tools such as green building certifications which many GBCs operate. These have become a de-facto gold standard for many sustainable investments and a key tool for ESG reporting for more than a decade.
We seek to drive alignment of global frameworks with local contexts, building on GBCs' deep understanding of local markets, environmental conditions and policies through proactive collaboration with ESG framework developers and users, public consultation feedback or ESG guidance for our market.
The Sustainable Finance Taskforce facilitates the development and implementation of ambitious sustainable finance legislation
The Sustainable Finance Taskforce leverages the pioneering work of WorldGBC's European Regional Network that has shaped and defined green mortgage standards, influenced the EU Taxonomy criteria for climate change mitigation, and subsequently steered the definition of wider Taxonomy criteria for the building sector in the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance.
We seek to support the development of sustainability criteria for the built environment in key sustainable finance legislation and to facilitate their implementation across supply chains and geographies.
Find out more about sustainable finance or contact our Sustainable Finance Lead, Julie Emmrich on jemmrich@worldgbc.org.
