The Real Estate Industry and Environmental Social and Governance Awareness (ESG)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Economy - Real estate industry, grade: 1,2, Reutlingen University, language: English, abstract: The objective of this paper is to identify potential metrics that can be used to measure the awareness of environmental, social, and governance factors within the real estate industry effectively. Thereby, this paper also attempts to identify drivers that encourage stakeholders to increase their ESG awareness. This paper further looks at the issue of ESG for the real estate industry from a macro perspective rather than a micro-perspective. Thus, metrics will be accordingly high-level to hopefully capture the awareness within the market from a multi-dimensional perspective, rather than analyzing the ESG metrics for a single player in the real estate industry. As one of the industries with the highest carbon footprint, the real estate sector needs to cut 77 % of total carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 2016 in order to meet goals set out in the UN Paris Agreement. These facts are alarming. Especially the longevity of real estate makes ESG issues particularly relevant for this industry. Thus, the real estate industry carries a significant amount of importance and responsibility when it comes to reaching these climate goals.