Further Deep ESG
Additionally, investment holding company Dentressangle has chosen Deepki, a real estate ESG data intelligence firm, to measure and track the environmental impact of its real estate investments.
For its two fully-owned real estate subsidiaries, Dentressangle is targeting a 40 per cent reduction in energy consumption by 2030, in line with France’s Tertiary Decree. To this end, Dentressangle has identified an urgent need to collect and monitor tenants’ energy consumption data, within the context of the tertiary decree and to define the best response strategy at portfolio and asset level.
Vincent Bryant & Emmanuel Blanchet, co-founders of Deepki, explained: “We’re very pleased to begin this collaboration with Dentressangle to support them in implementing their ESG strategy. We’ll be deploying Deepki’s top technological tools across a major real estate portfolio with specific needs, to ensure a comprehensive, ongoing assessment of energy consumption and accelerate the company’s environmental transition.”
Christophe Broncard, Managing Director of Dentressangle Immobilier Logistique, has this to say: “Our goal at Dentressangle is to position the real estate company as a preferred regional partner, supporting the regions’ economic vitality and their environmental commitments.
“For us, measuring and drastically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of our buildings is a fundamental first step. To ensure a successful outcome, we naturally called on the European leader in ESG for real estate, and we’re confident that this collaboration will allow us to reach our goals.”
The GRI Perspective
It might be tempting to view all this ESG and partnership news as a rush of PR, were it not the case that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has too laid out pointers on the growing need for ESG service provision.
Its new paper, ‘Towards stakeholder capitalism: how we can get there,’ argues that today there is a continuing perception shift in business culture – from value creation that benefits shareholders alone towards one that takes account of a broader set of stakeholders, encompassing social engagement and environmental impact.
This, self-evidently, is another way to describe ESG criteria. GRI believes that explaining how a company’s actions seek not only to be profitable, but also to safeguard stakeholder interests, is a powerful tool to demonstrate their contribution to people and planet.
GRI goes further, outlining the point that a stakeholder-centric corporate strategy can have multiple benefits; from enhancing reputation and brand to improved ability to hire new staff, from mitigating environmental risks to increased access to capital markets.
GRI’s wider point is that shareholder capitalism without reporting on the impacts of sustainability issues on value creation makes little sense. Stakeholder capitalism, meanwhile, without sustainability reporting that reflects the needs of society and the environment makes no sense either.
Matching Verdantix’s analysis, GRI’s logic is that growing truly sustainable corporate and environmental capital will involve achieving socioeconomic and environmental cohesion. This demands a wider perspective than climate metrics or investor interests alone: this is where GRI’s multi-stakeholder sustainability reporting standards come into play, alongside financial disclosure.
Peter Paul van de Wijs, GRI Chief External Affairs Officer, explains: “As Larry Fink stated last month, “stakeholder capitalism is not ‘woke’, it’s capitalism”. At GRI we are in firm agreement – yet failing to endorse sustainability reporting that meets the needs of a multitude of stakeholders falls short of the societal expectations of true stakeholder capitalism.
“We understand that businesses need to be profitable, and that doing so in a way that does not conflict with their obligations to people and the climate can be challenging. At the same time, understanding and managing sustainability risks is a prerequisite when responding to the transparency needs of stakeholders, which include investors.
“That’s why corporate reporting needs to fully reflect impacts on the economy, environment and society, as enabled by the GRI Standards. We believe the best way that this can be achieved is by moving to a comprehensive, two-pillar reporting system – with financial and sustainability disclosure on an equal footing.”
Tomorrow’s Dawn
The recent raft of stories and releases on ESG stands as testament to how fast the corporate environment is shifting to embrace sustainability reporting.
This represents a massive commercial opportunity for ESG and sustainability consulting, but also a major environmental win as firms across the planet begin to see that transparent reporting, regulatory pressure and stakeholder weight are redefining how business is done and how what’s considered beneficial or benign has radically altered. The message isn’t brand new among these pages, but its truth remains no less potent; embracing ESG within a corporate’s core operations is no longer a privilege, it’s a necessity.
SEE ALSO: Why Corporates Must Integrate Financial and Non-Financial (ESG) Reporting