Landsec has created a £135m investment plan to decarbonise its £11bn estate by 2030.
The REIT, which this morning announced a positive set of results as the UK economy bounces back post-Covid, said the new fund would be used to finance a series of initiatives over the coming nine years to reduce Landsec’s carbon footprint and drive innovation and best practice across the wider industry.
The investment equates to approximately 1% of portfolio value, said Landsec, and will enable it to stay ahead of the future non-domestic Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards, which require an EPC B certification by 2030, as well as other regulatory requirements
Landsec expects the investment programme to remove 24,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from its operations – equivalent to more than 35,000 return flights from London to New York.
It will do this by reducing the REIT’s operational energy use though the optimisation of building management system with AI technology, working with building users to drive down energy consumption and through moving to cleaner sources of energy through replacing gas-fired boilers with electric systems and investing in renewable energy, including onsite PV.
Chief executive Mark Allan said: “Our net zero transition investment plan is a significant commitment to ensure that Landsec delivers against its science-based target to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030. We are investing across our entire estate because we want to remain at the forefront of everything the property sector is doing to respond to the climate crisis. Through these actions, we will be supporting the current and future needs of our customers, communities and stakeholders as we help them transition to a low-carbon world.”
He added: “Never has it been more important to prioritise carbon reduction programmes. The future of the planet depends on businesses like ours driving forward change – as quickly as we can.”
Alongside the investment in its existing estate, Landsec said it remained committed to designing and building net zero buildings with The Forge, its first net zero building, on track to complete in October 2022. The Forge has achieved to date a 25% reduction in embodied carbon from its initial design stage.
Landsec was the first real estate company in the world to have its carbon emission target approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative in 2016 and in 2019 aligned its science-based targets with the 1.5°C global warming scenario – targeting a 70% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 compared with a 2013/14 baseline.
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