LaSalle Investment Management commits to the Urban Land Institute’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance’s net-zero carbon (NZC) goal with the aim of reducing the landlord-controlled operational carbon emissions of its global portfolio of managed assets to net zero by the year 2050.

Since signing on to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment over 10 years ago, LaSalle has been working across its managed portfolio to improve the sustainability aspects of its assets. In 2017, it  added environmental factors to its investment strategy, recognizing the importance of issues like energy and water efficiency, climate change impacts and resilience, and increasing carbon regulations as long-term, secular demand drivers of real estate.

In 2018, LaSalle became a member of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative and helped shape the future of climate risk assessment reporting for the industry by taking part in a two-year Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures pilot project.

The success of this environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration has seen the business refocus its sustainability programme, using this positive momentum to create a global carbon strategy to achieve NZC alongside other important sustainability goals.

“When we invest in ESG best practices, we are enhancing the performance of our clients’ investments, and bettering the communities we live, work and invest in,” says Jeff Jacobson, LaSalle’s CEO.

The ULI Greenprint net-zero carbon goal is designed to meaningfully reduce the built environment’s impact on climate change beyond existing efforts. It encourages portfolio-wide carbon reductions via deep energy efficiency improvements, on-site renewable energy, green utility power and building electrification, off-site renewables, renewable energy credits and, as a last resort, carbon offsets. The goal is in line with the Paris agreement and findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to limit global warming to 1.5⁰ C.