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Marta Schantz

Marta Schantz is the co–executive director of the Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate at ULI, which leads the global real estate industry in creating buildings and places where people and the environment thrive.

The ULI Sustainability Outlook 2021, a new report from the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance, highlights the commercial real estate industry’s increasingly focused view of environmental, social, and governance strategies in 2021.
The appetite for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing continues to soar, with record inflows amid the pandemic. “Green bonds” in particular have risen in popularity dramatically over the decade, from what ULI considered an emerging trend a few years ago to a mainstream investment opportunity in 2020.
Volume 11 of the Greenprint Performance Report™ measures and tracks the performance of 10,190 properties owned by Greenprint members. It finds that over the past year, carbon emissions have dropped by more than 3 percent, energy consumption by almost 3 percent, and water consumption by more than 3 percent. In 2019, Greenprint members invested over US$50.1 million on sustainability projects ranging from tenant engagement to building envelope upgrades and recommissioning, totaling more than 6,000 individual projects.
Multifamily owners are navigating a sensitive balance when considering options to optimize and address increased energy and water loads while also working with their residents to navigate the new physical risk challenges posed by COVID-19.
While operators cannot simply “turn off” an entire commercial property, there are ways to leverage efficiency to reduce the utility cost burden in times of variable usage.
Embodied carbon refers to the emissions associated with manufacturing, transportation, and construction of building materials, as well as building disposal. As buildings become more efficient and emit less carbon during their operational lifetime, embodied carbon will become the majority share of building-related carbon emissions.
ULI Greenprint members and real estate leaders evaluate the health and benefits of incorporating the elements of nature into their built environments.
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