Urban investment firm Urban Partners has announced that the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has validated the company’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This confirms that Urban Partners’ decarbonization pathway is aligned with the 1.5°C ambition of the Paris Agreement. The firm has grounded its pathway in commercial decision-making, with a clear focus on the business case for mitigating climate risks and for pursuing sustainability-linked business opportunities.
SBTi’s mission is to drive science-based climate action in the corporate sector consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2050. Urban Partners is committed to transparency through SBTi, the gold standard for sustainability reporting, with decarbonization targets following SBTi’s Financial Institutions Near-Term Criteria, as well as the newly released Buildings Criteria. During the development of the new Buildings Criteria last year, Urban Partners were chosen as one of only 15 companies globally to pilot the guidelines and provide input into the development of the tool.
Urban Partners’ decarbonization strategy is integrated across all operations and investment activities, with a specific focus on its real estate strategy, Nrep, which accounts for over 90 percent of its total emissions, making the real estate portfolio pivotal in driving impactful and commercially viable climate action.
Driving emissions down – and commercial value up
The real estate strategy Nrep’s ambitious targets include an 80% reduction of operational intensity emissions from 2022 to 2030, which would, in the current portfolio composition, translate into targeting as low as 2.1 kg Co2e/sqm/year. This is significantly more progressive than SBTi’s requirement of a 54 percent reduction target, illustrating the firm’s commitment to not just meeting, but surpassing global sustainability benchmarks.
The operational emissions reduction drives both planetary and economic value, with the approach improving building valuations and energy bills for occupiers. Key levers include increased energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources, which results in lower operating costs and less exposure to volatile energy prices linked to fossil fuels. Urban Partners is also committed to not installing new fossil fuel equipment, such as gas boilers.
As an early adopter of the new SBTi Buildings Criteria, Urban Partners is one of the first firms to set an upfront embodied emissions intensity reduction target. The commitment is to reduce upfront embodied emissions by 50 percent by 2030 compared to the 2022 baseline – a target that with the current portfolio composition would translate into 3.3 CO2e/sqm/year. Reducing emissions during the construction phase will help to ensure that cities grow sustainably; a commitment that is core to Urban Partners’ urban business strategy.
Elisabeth Hermann Frederiksen, Head of Sustainability at Urban Partners, said: “We continue to see a strong commercial logic for decarbonization. Having been committed to delivering real decarbonization for almost two decades, we have developed a fair amount of expertise in identifying solutions and developing business models that scale at commercially attractive terms.
Urban Partners integrates decarbonization across our value chain. We take a ‘whole building life cycle’ approach, emphasising the green energy transition. As such, our reliance on carbon credits is reduced. We want to assess actual asset performance both from a risk and an operating efficiency perspective. We believe SBTi is a strong framework to validate actual decarbonization.”
