ULI Europe has published a new Asset Sustainability Committees Best Practice Guide through its C Change programme to support collaboration between owners, occupiers, and property managers in decarbonising multi-let commercial buildings.
Across Europe, the commercial real estate sector has made significant progress in setting net-zero and sustainability commitments. However, translating these ambitions into measurable action within occupied buildings remains a persistent challenge.
Once a building is in use, responsibility for reducing emissions is shared across multiple parties. Building owners typically control capital investment decisions and base-building systems, while occupiers influence how buildings are used day to day, including energy consumption and fit-out decisions. While leases and contracts define roles and responsibilities, there are often limited opportunities beyond this for owners and occupiers to collaborate on sustainability initiatives, discuss constraints and priorities, and agree coordinated, building-level actions.
This lack of structured, ongoing collaboration can slow progress on decarbonizing occupied assets, even where there is willingness on all sides to act. Property managers, operating at the interface between owners and occupiers, are therefore a critical stakeholder. With day-to-day oversight of buildings and established tenant relationships, they are often best placed to convene discussions, support information sharing, and help translate ambition into practical delivery.
In response, a growing number of leading owners and property managers are introducing structured asset-level sustainability committees, also known as green committees or sustainability forums. These regular, building-level forums provide a practical setting for owners, occupiers, and property managers to review performance data, align priorities, and coordinate action.
To help scale and share this emerging approach, ULI Europe’s C Change programme has developed the Asset Sustainability Committees Best Practice Guide. The guide explores how these forums can be designed and implemented in practice to support collaboration in multi-let commercial buildings, particularly office, retail and mixed-use assets.
Based on interviews with twelve leading real estate owners and property managers across Europe, the guide provides practical guidance on when sustainability committees add the most value, how they can be designed and resourced, and how they can be adapted across different assets and organizational models. It highlights that committees work best where asset-level decarbonization plans are in place, backed by capital investment, and supported by other approaches such as green leases, data-sharing mechanisms and fit-out guidance.
The guide features practical case studies from organisations including PIMCO Prime Real Estate, IPUT Real Estate, Hines, BNP Paribas Real Estate, Derwent London, Redevco, Pembroke ,and Lendlease, showing how different approaches are being applied in practice to support data transparency, peer learning ,and coordinated action at building level.
A key output of the guide is a practical implementation checklist, published as a standalone resource. The checklist provides a step-by-step framework to help owners, property managers ,and asset teams assess applicability, establish effective governance and resourcing, secure engagement ,and sustain delivery over time.
Emily Hallworth, manager, ESG Programs at ULI Europe, comments: “Commercial real estate in Europe has made significant progress in setting net zero and sustainability commitments. Yet, once buildings are occupied, decarbonization efforts are often slowed by fragmented data, misaligned landlord and occupier priorities, and a lack of clear, building-level actions that tenants can get behind. Asset sustainability committees help close this gap by creating a structured way to collaborate and deliver action together.”
Sophie Chick, vice president, ESG Programs at ULI Europe, adds: “As regulatory and reporting expectations increase, property managers are increasingly at the center of owner-occupier coordination. They are often the only party with a whole-building view of performance, as well as the day-to-day relationships needed to support delivery. This guide recognizes that reality and provides practical guidance and examples of how asset sustainability committees can offer a structured way for property managers to bring stakeholders together and move from reporting to action.”
The Asset Sustainability Committees Best Practice Guide is available from ULI Knowledge Finder.
