Converting sustainable funds into sustainable buildings

In a world where investment markets and funds dictate which developments go ahead, the people investing in 'sustainable' funds play a key role in tackling climate change. As such, we must ensure that these sustainable projects are indeed what they claim to be and can make a real positive contribution to reassure investors enough to continue investing in them.

That’s where the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) methodology comes into place. The ESG methodology acts as an initial screening for sustainable investments, in which a framework and targets are set up, and each asset is evaluated as part of a sustainable development framework (SDB) and the likelihood of meeting the key performance indicators within.

Cundall has recently been involved in several projects, whereby an investor wants to understand if they should purchase a particular asset, in terms of them meeting certain sustainability requirements set by a sustainable fund’s SDB. Our role has been to inform them about how a certain building would perform in the future, whether it should be built as designed and advise if it is a good investment that meets the SDB requirements.

This seemingly simple task entails a degree of responsibility. We have seen a number of buildings being designed without any consideration of sustainability targets. Instead, the buildings as planned have the potential for high operational energy use, high embodied carbon, and poor performance in terms of certain sustainability themes such as biodiversity and health and wellbeing. It is our role to identify and flag such issues to our clients, and for them to either demand a better performance prior to acquisition, or to decide not to go ahead with the purchase at all.

Ideally, others in our industry should be doing the same. If this is the case, low-performance buildings will either not be built, or it will force designers to meet higher sustainability standards, and we would only be constructing high-performing buildings. The greater the demand for investment in 'sustainable' projects, the stronger the pressure will become for designers to align their buildings to such targets.

Another key element in this discussion is the fact that the targets themselves haven’t been defined by a main governing institution, and there is a wide range of targets that buildings could potentially align to. Setting easier targets could mean that a building with poorer sustainability credentials may end up classified as 'sustainable' alongside other superior-performing buildings. Therefore, one of the most important elements of this exercise is to select a robust set of sustainability criteria to follow.

In the end, both sustainability consultants and investors will play an important role in the development of sustainable buildings. Investors will create the demand for superior performing buildings, and sustainability consultants will ensure robust standards are met. Only by working together can we make sustainable buildings a reality.

Cundall is on a journey to zero carbon. We recently achieved carbon neutral as a business globally and now we’re setting ourselves a new, even more ambitious goal - by 2030 every project we design will be zero carbon. To find out more, click here.