Oceania leads the way in the 2025 GRESB results
Authors
Earlier this month, the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) released the results from the 2025 reporting cycle. GRESB is the real estate sector’s global annual assessment which benchmarks environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of real estate portfolios. GRESB scores are a valuable tool to demonstrate measurable progress to investors and identify improvement opportunities for real estate portfolios.
GRESB real estate scoring is split into two components: Standing Investments (composed of existing assets) and Developments (assets under development).
Responses in Oceania came from 132 participants in the 2025 reporting cycle, the majority of which represent Australian participants. Key insights to help understand trends in Oceania:
1. The Oceania market stands out
Participants in Oceania had the highest average scores for both the Standing Investment (94% average management score, 74% average performance score) and Development (95% average management score, 94% average development score) components compared to any other single region globally. Entities in Oceania have ticked off a lot of the easy wins and ongoing improvements will require incremental gains to be made in more difficult areas to stand out as a sector leader among peers.
Common aspects with room for improvement include:
risk management (which could be through establishing a clear environmental risk identification and mitigation process);
operational energy performance (which can be achieved through efficiency upgrades); and
operational waste performance (which can be improved through waste audits and identifying landfill diversion opportunities).
2. Stringency and competition are increasing
Despite yearly scoring changes with additional requirements for evidence and response validation criteria, scores continued to increase. These results highlight that participants are keeping up with increases to scoring stringency, thus making it more difficult to stand out amongst peers. For example, data coverage (e.g. % floor area where data is available) has improved year on year since 2023 across Energy, Greenhouse Gas (GHG), Water and Waste in Oceania, reflecting greater attention to performance monitoring over time, and more accurate awareness of emissions reduction opportunities across all sectors. GRESB considers whole building coverage (including tenants) which can make improvements difficult, especially for some sectors like retail where there are many small tenancies. The rollout of embedded networks can be one way to address this challenge. GRESB is in the process of developing differentiating criteria to separate leaders from the pack, thus further increasing the competition to stand out.
3. The retail sector has room to improve
Retail assets in Oceania have the highest GHG Intensity. Retail assets in Oceania had nearly double the intensity of the next highest sector (Figure 1) and double the intensity of retail in all regions globally. While the reasons for the high emissions intensity for the retail sector are complex, they do not reflect the sustainability ambition of the sector with over 90% of retail entities in Oceania having a net zero target.
Opportunities to improve decarbonisation efforts for the retail sector include renewable energy investment, engagement with tenants about their priorities for sustainability, and establishing clear criteria for asset acquisition and development that factors in operational efficiency.
Figure 1. GHG Intensity by sector in Oceania
These results come at a time when Australia is transitioning to mandatory reporting requirements (AASB S2 Climate-related disclosures), driving additional attention on emissions reporting. Stakeholders continue to expect more detailed disclosures to mitigate risk and drive value generation. As organisations benefit from more robust and transparent decision-making related to climate change risks facing organisations in the region in coming years, investors can have more confidence in the results. As data quality improves, then focus can shift to identifying priority assets and ultimately making better business decisions. Green Star Performance and NABERS are good tools for bolstering a GRESB score, along with the benefits of identifying improvement opportunities and helping to secure green finance.
