By Lisa Stanley, LEED AP ID+C director client solutions USGBC
Do you operate or own a real estate portfolio that works to meet key performance indicators for emissions, energy, water or waste?
There is an increasing need to provide these widely used metrics and work with risk mitigation, business continuity planning, climate screening, and worker health and safety planning. While it can be challenging to work with one building at a time, tracking at the portfolio level presents different obstacles.
However, there are great benefits to tracking metrics at scale. It can help companies stay competitive while also providing transparency for work being done for climate, environmental, social and governance goals. Investors, tenants and employees demand action towards a healthier world, and are seeking transparency into claims. People are choosing companies that prioritize environmental, social and governance concerns.
Portfolio managers who understand these challenges can use tools to support tracking performance and metrics. The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) PERFORM program, for example, is designed to assist with the work required to measure progress toward user-defined targets and, when applicable, obtain third-party verification from Green Building Certification Inc. (GBCI).
PERFORM is a solution designed to work with organizations just starting out on this journey of working with portfolio metrics, as well as those already deep into implementation and disclosure. For example, PERFORM is an approved assurance scheme for GRESB reporting supporting indicators for energy, emissions water and waste with limited assurance verification by GBCI. To streamline submittals and address concerns with data entry PEFORM leverages GBCI’s online platform and can accommodate integrations with user software providers and offline spreadsheets prepared for internal tracking or other reporting entities like GRESB, ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
There are additional benefits to using a tracking tool. PERFORM, for example, offers a flexible approach, allowing organizations to define their portfolio based on characteristics that reasonably represent the performance goal being tracked and/or verified.
PERFORM is also a third-party verification program, which enhances credibility, provides limited assurance verification and demonstrates progress in meeting the expectations of stakeholders, the public, and regulatory bodies. It also provides access to guidance and tools, leveraging a range of partner tools at both property and portfolio levels to improve performance and communicate improvements.
In PERFORM there are two approaches to tracking organizational progress. The first is to track and seek verification for an improvement that is documented by achieving a single absolute value. Depending on the metric, this can be a number like total GHG emissions, a percentage like waste diversion rate, or energy intensity per unit of area. For example, an owner can work with and receive verification for past performance achieved, such as, “Achieved a waste diversion rate of 75% in 2024, across the entire office portfolio.” Owners can also set a future goal and then document progress toward this goal.
For example, an owner of retail spaces might target a future goal to “Implement the Resilience: Business Continuity Plan across 100% of all common areas for our shopping malls by end of 2025.” The second approach available is to track a change or improvement in performance compared to a baseline year. The baseline year can be defined by the user and can be the previous year or any year prior. Another example is a previous achievement, “Reduced energy use by 50% at end of 2024 from the 2020 baseline.” A future goal may look like, “For all occupied offices located in the US achieve an 10% reduction in emissions in 2025 over the 2024 baseline.”
As you dive into the various PERFORM performance metrics requirements you will see that global standards have been leveraged, ensuring that organizations across the world can benefit. For example, the energy metric can draw from ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 100: Energy and Emissions Building Performance Standards for Existing Buildings (2024); ENERGY STAR® NextGen™ Certification for Commercial Buildings; The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards for Sustainability Reporting; GRESB; IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures); U.S. Green Building Council: LEED Green Building Rating System and/or the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) reference standards.
People often ask, how does LEED fit with this new offering? They are different products. LEED is about certification for an individual asset, with a framework of requirements. While it doesn’t directly align with PERFORM, LEED can complement your efforts to improve various performance metrics with PERFORM at the portfolio level.
Learn more about the PERFORM on the USGBC website, including resource guides, access to experts and webinar information.
Lisa Stanley works closely with industry leaders across the various market sectors as they implement green building practices. She listens and learns generating customer specific solutions; always bringing the market knowledge back to USGBC/GBCI to support and enhance products and customer service.
