As the preliminary 2024 GRESB Real Estate scores were released earlier this month, many organizations noticed a reduction in their overall scores. GRESB recently announced that the tightening of key performance standards in 2024 resulted in an average scoring reduction of ~2 points. With Q4 quickly approaching, now is the time to implement strategies to elevate your 2025 GRESB score.

Key Changes to the 2024 GRESB Real Estate Benchmark
Reflecting GRESB's ongoing effort to improve the rigor of real asset sustainability and meet evolving stakeholder expectations, the 2024 RE Benchmark included the following new criteria and analytical methods:

• Building Certifications: GRESB now discounts the value of building certifications as they age, increasing the value of recently achieved certifications and preventing double counting on a single asset. Funds with older certifications will continue to lose points in this category over time if new (re)certifications are not pursued.
• Country-Specific Benchmarking: GRESB introduced country-specific benchmarking for all key performance indicators to provide a more accurate assessment of the competitive environment for funds in the same country, enabling more precise comparisons and scoring within country-level groups.
• Scoring of New Indicators: Several previously unscored indicators were scored for the first time in 2024 (e.g., science-based target setting), which led to adjustments to the max score potentials of other indicators.

Considering these changes, GRESB stated that overall scores should not be directly compared year-over-year between 2023 and 2024. However, individual indicators and metrics can still be compared to assess progress and strengths/weaknesses.

Opportunities to Elevate Your 2025 GRESB Score
While scoring improvement opportunities abound for new and seasoned GRESB participants, the following strategies typically have the greatest impact:

• Revisit Your Building Certification Strategy: As mentioned, GRESB now places greater value on recently achieved building certifications. Pursuing certifications like LEED, BREEAM, and Fitwel that focus on resource efficiency and occupant health are aligned with GRESB’s evolving certification criteria. At breea, we approach building certifications strategically at the portfolio-level to ensure the greatest portfolio coverage, value to your stakeholders, and financial returns.
• Expand Data Coverage & Accuracy: Expanding energy, water, and waste data coverage across portfolios is a perennial challenge that has an outsized impact on GRESB scores. Consider strategies like green leases, shadow metering, and leveraging aggregated building data to close data gaps and increase portfolio data coverage.
• Focus on Asset Performance: In the future, GRESB will be placing greater weight on the actual energy, water, and waste performance of assets as compared to industry benchmarks. Performing ASHRAE audits to identify performance improvement opportunities and mapping against asset-level CRREM decarbonization pathways will help improve performance, achieve targets, and futureproof your assets.
• Manage Climate-Related Risks: In 2023, GRESB began scoring questions related to the management of climate-related risks. Many RE organizations are not currently equipped to holistically evaluate and mitigate climate risks, both physical and transitional. Developing a systematic process to identify and assess the impacts of these risks will improve your GRESB score and can strengthen the financial resilience of your portfolio.

Change and continual improvement are integral to GRESB, and for tackling the sustainability challenges ahead. The strategies promoted by GRESB are a win-win for organizations and their stakeholders, strengthening resilience and financial returns. At breea, we focus on the GRESB long game by charting multi-year improvement strategies to ensure the needle is always moving in lockstep with changing market conditions and evolving stakeholder expectations.