The state of greenhouse gas emissions reporting in the European real estate sector.
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Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2017-10-30
Department
Major/Subject
Creative Sustainability in Real Estate
Mcode
IA3026
Degree programme
Master’s Degree Programme in Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
46 + 13
Series
Abstract
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and the associated climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Real estate sector is responsible for approximately 36% of the total GHG emissions worldwide. While being the most polluting single industry, real estate also offers easy reductions in GHG emissions. This has prompted the development of various legislations and voluntary initiatives to reduce GHG emissions from real estate sector. Many of the companies in the sector choose to report their GHG emissions following some framework such as GRI G4 or EPRA guidelines. This thesis looks at the current GHG emissions reporting in the European real estate sector. Specifically, what emissions are included in the sustainability reports. The LCA is evaluated as a future tool for integrated emissions reporting. Finally, the currently reported emissions are compared against benchmark of emissions from full LCA. From 116 listed European real estate companies only 50 had dedicated sustainability report and only 9 acknowledged emissions arising from other than building use phase. At the same time green building certificates such as BREEAM and LEED have gained a significant popularity. Many of the companies also included in their sustainability report the number of certified buildings. Many of these certificates include Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) which quantifies emissions throughout all stages of the buildings life-cycle including the embodied emissions in the construction materials. However, only one of the companies analysed included these emissions in their sustainability report. In future the importance of embodied emissions will only increase due to improved energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. In new buildings the share of embodied emissions can account for up to 45% of the total emissions which is also illustrated by the benchmark compiled for this research. Based on emissions reported by six large real estate companies that also develop properties, the reported emissions were between 24% and 68% of average LCA emissions from similar portfolios.Description
Supervisor
Viitanen, KaukoThesis advisor
Rashidfarokhi, AnahitaKeywords
sustainability, GHG emissions, climate change, LCA, reporting