13 DECEMBER 2023
Earlier this year, Grosvenor published its global carbon commitment which will see all our businesses reduce direct and indirect emissions in line with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. As part of this, each operating company that has not already done so pledged to publish their own net zero carbon pathway by April 2024.
For Grosvenor Diversified Property Investments, a business aiming to double in size by 2025 to £1.5 billion in assets, the publishing of our pathway this month during COP28 shows our commitment to ensuring the partners we work with will support these aims.
Our Commitment
Following the SBTi Private Equity Sector Science Based Target Guidance, our commitment states that by 2040, 100% of our partners will have 1.5°C-aligned pathways on exit. This includes all direct and indirect emissions (Scopes 1, 2 and 3).
This approach is intentional; 99% of our 2021 baseline emissions were associated with our investment portfolio (Scope 3) and whilst this underlines the lack of direct control our business has in delivering absolute carbon reductions, it also demonstrates the huge potential we have to use our influence.
As a responsible investor deploying Grosvenor’s proprietary capital, we are not subject to outside investor return criteria or artificial timing pressures, giving us the opportunity to invest from the very short to the long term.
This gives us a great deal of flexibility in how and with whom we choose to do business and, by extension, our ability to influence the behaviours and ambition of our partners.
Our Approach to Delivery
Due to the scale of our Scope 3 emissions, our ability to deliver sustainable societal benefit through responsible investing centres on our choice of partners, their willingness to work to improve their credentials, and our ability to help and influence them.
In our 13 years of operation, we’ve been careful about who we work with, investing only alongside specialist teams who show a tangible commitment to having a positive impact on the environment and society and wanting to improve their performance.
Our pathway also complements our 2023 responsible investment strategy, which identifies the standards we expect of ourselves and our partners, advocating for the efficient use of natural resources, ensuring our activities restore and enhance the environment, improving land, property and places and making a positive impact within communities. With a holistic approach to sustainable investment, our capital can support wider benefits beyond carbon reduction alone.
We’re already seeing benefits of working with like-minded partners. This year, we invested alongside IndoSpace, our industrial and logistics partner in India.
This partnership was founded in shared values of environmental responsibility – with IndoSpace already in the process of setting SBTi-aligned carbon reduction targets prior to our partnership.
Our partners REINO-IO and Bridge Investment Group continue to demonstrate a tangible commitment to sustainable investment – both of which are achieving industry leading environmental certifications for our portfolio assets in Poland and the US.
Our first step in delivery will be assessing how to best engage across a globally diverse portfolio, where partners are at different stages of their goal-setting journeys. Developing an aligned approach with each individual partner will require effective engagement.
Longer term, we’ll continue to work across Grosvenor and within the wider sector, revisiting our strategy as climate science, industry guidance and best practice adapts. This will help ensure we support Grosvenor’s global aim to deliver lasting commercial and social benefit, as well as continuing to advocate for industry collaboration on decarbonisation.