Efficiently use natural resources, restore and enhance the environment
Efficiently using natural resources, restoring and enhancing the environment is one of the five principal objectives that help guide how we meet our purpose of delivering lasting commercial, social and environmental benefit.
We are significantly reducing our carbon emissions, reducing waste and actively managing, expanding and improving natural habitats.
Please see below for metrics and case studies that demonstrate and substantiate the the progress we are making around this objective.
Visit these pages to see how we are making progress against our other objectives:
- Deliver strong commercial results
- Improve land, property, places, goods and services
- Make a positive impact within communities
- Support long-term charitable causes
And please read our latest Annual Review to discover more about the full breadth of Grosvenor’s international activities.
Efficiently using natural resources, restoring and enhancing the environment is one of the five principal objectives that help guide how we meet our purpose of delivering lasting commercial, social and environmental benefit.
We are significantly reducing our carbon emissions, reducing waste and actively managing, expanding and improving natural habitats.
Please see below for metrics and case studies that demonstrate and substantiate the the progress we are making around this objective.
Visit these pages to see how we are making progress against our other objectives:
- Deliver strong commercial results
- Improve land, property, places, goods and services
- Make a positive impact within communities
- Support long-term charitable causes
And please read our latest Annual Review to discover more about the full breadth of Grosvenor’s international activities.
Net zero: Making progress to significantly reduce carbon emissions
At Grosvenor, we are on a mission to decarbonise our property holdings; to invest in food and agtech businesses and new technologies which are able to disrupt carbon intense practices and enable a more sustainable food system; and to preserve, restore and enhance rural environments promoting their ability to sequester carbon.
Across our many and diverse activities, we are at different stages of our journey but are working with the same goals in sight: to understand our carbon baseline, to develop credible carbon reduction strategies and plans and to turn these into action – directly and in tandem with our partners, suppliers, occupiers and a variety of other stakeholders.
Find out more about how in our latest Annual Review (pages 54-55).
Carbon emissions: like-for-like portfolio
-6%
Grosvenor-wide
When our property businesses developed their net zero carbon pathways and strategies, we understood that our progress along these pathways would not be smooth, as retrofits take time to complete, new, more efficient systems take time to install and our development pipeline is continually evolving.
Furthermore, several of our businesses have plans to expand the size of their portfolios, and therefore, an absolute reduction in emissions is not always the most complete measure upon which to judge their performance in the short term. Like-for-like (LfL), and intensity metrics, are therefore us to understand the progress of our business in the short to medium term, before we turn to absolute reductions later in our net zero carbon journey.
Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the year-on-year data presented. In 2020, the closure of many of our office and retail assets due to lockdown restrictions caused an artificial drop in our carbon emissions.
In 2021, our assets reopened, however, we are pleased to report that our carbon emissions have not increased alongside their reopening, and that we have instead continued to reduce our carbon emissions this year, with a 6% decrease in 2021 on a like-for-like basis. These emissions include all scope 1 and 2, and some scope 3 emissionsnassociated primarily with business travel, energy submetered to occupiers and emissions from the supply and treatment of water. In terms of absolute emissions, we have seen a reduction of 15% in our scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2019 and we plan to continue to reduce our emissions in years to come.
Energy consumption
(hidden)
3%
Urban Property
Our like-for-like energy consumption increased by 3% in 2021. The increase was driven primarily by higher demand for energy as the economy, and our buildings, reopened after the pandemic.
However, since 2019, we have reduced our absolute energy consumption by 8%.
Water consumption
(hidden)
-8%
Urban Property
Our like-for-like water consumption decreased by 8% in 2021 as a result of numerous water-saving initiatives, and despite the reopening of our buildings in 2021.
Our UK property business’s water saving initiatives were especially impressive, with water consumption down by 56% across the like-for-like period.
Waste diverted from landfill
(hidden)
93%
Urban Property
In 2021, we diverted 88% of operational waste from landfill.
We also extended our reporting to centrally measure construction waste, of which 96% was diverted from landfill. 93% is a weighted average of these metrics.
Peatland that has been restored
(hidden)
78%
Rural Estates
During 2019 and 2020, we conducted surveys of our land on the Abbeystead Estate to understand how much peatland we managed, and the state that this was in. Since then, we have worked hard to restore over 78% of the bare peat identified.
Peat is very important for carbon sequestration, however, if left unmanaged can become a significant carbon emitter.
Through our work, we have managed to reduce the emissions of these areas by 60%.
Number of trees planted
(hidden)
430,000
Rural Estates
We planted more than 430,000 trees in 2021 as part of the largest programme in a single year on the Eaton Estate, across more than 25 hectares.
All our forestry is managed sustainably and in the last three years we have planted over 500,000 trees on our Rural Estates, helping to improve water quality, increase biodiversity and reduce the risk of flooding. We manage more than 2,800 hectares of woodlands. These trees and the soils they grow in are a valuable carbon store and remove atmospheric carbon as they grow. Our foresters are responsible for the ongoing care and management of these woodlands and trees, as well as the production of high-quality timber, woodchip – fuelling our biomass boilers, providing a renewable source of energy – as well as firewood logs.