This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
GLOBAL real estate company Lendlease is calling on its industry peers to expand their decarbonisation efforts by tackling value chain or Scope 3 emissions, the sector’s largest source of emissions.
At last week’s Climate Week NYC, Lendlease launched the Lendlease Scope 3 Emissions Protocol v.1, which outlines the company’s view on Scope 3 emissions reporting boundaries and has been designed to be a useful model for others in real estate investments, development and construction.
“We applaud Lendlease’s decision to share the Scope 3 Emissions Protocol V.1 and its call for consistent and comparable reporting boundaries across our sector,” said Davina Rooney, CEO at the Green Building Council of Australia.
“We know that industry transformation is possible when we are aligned and working towards the same goal and the decarbonisation of the property value chain is an urgent priority.”
Last year, the Green Building Council of Australia updated its Green Star Performance industry rating tool last September to create a more efficient path to net zero for existing buildings transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions that occur in an organisation’s value chain and often make up the majority of a group’s carbon footprint.
In the real estate sector, these emissions can be challenging to address due to limited guidance on Scope 3 reporting boundaries, difficulties in tracking and measuring and the sector’s reliance on carbon intensive materials including steel, cement, aluminium and glass.
Lendlease reports that around 90% of its total carbon emissions are Scope 3 emissions, coming from upstream activities, such as the manufacturing of building materials and downstream activities, including emissions from the use of electricity and natural gas by tenants.
In launching the protocol, Lendlease is calling for others in the industry, such as developers, builders and construction material manufacturers, to focus on addressing Scope 3 emissions.
“The Protocol is a seminal piece of work on our pathway towards our target of Absolute Zero – with no offsets – by 2040. To know where to focus our decarbonisation, we need to first know how we are accounting for our Scope 3 emissions – what is material and therefore, what is in and out of scope,” said Cate Harris, group head of sustainability and Lendlease Foundation.
“We want the Protocol to spark conversation and engagement across our sector, to help drive to a consensus on how to account for and report on Scope 3 emissions.”
“If we can achieve this, then we can collaborate as an industry to solve the two big systemic challenges: the decarbonisation of harder to abate materials, and the digitisation and sharing of Scope 3 emissions data. The Protocol is intended as an important first step towards that outcome.”
Lendlease is also calling for an industry-wide data-sharing platform to enable the secure exchange of digitised, verified Scope 3 emissions data.
“We want to support and drive emission reductions up and down our value chain to work towards our Absolute Zero by 2040 target,” said Jeremy Hutchinson, group head of supply chain at Lendlease.
“We do not underestimate the challenges in decarbonising harder to abate materials and we continue to work with our supply chain partners who have aligned aspirations on emission reduction targets, supporting their investment and innovation in decarbonisation.”
Disclosure of material Scope 3 emissions is being proposed by regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. and by sustainability reporting standards such as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).
