Welcoming over 80 CPA members and stakeholders from across Central London’s real estate industry, this seminar explored the key opportunities and challenges that Green Finance has for the property sector. Hosted at DAC Beachcroft’s office in The Walbrook Building, attendees heard about cross-sector collaboration and sustainability.
As a major contributor to the UK’s carbon emissions (up to 90% in Central London), the property sector must work together to tackle the climate emergency. Investors and developers have realised the need to invest in clean resilient growth, in a move that has seen increased collaboration between the real estate and financial services sectors. This collaboration is essential for delivering a net-zero built environment.
The City of London Corporation has made several commitments to ensure sustainability in the City through eco-friendly development, bold transport initiatives and Green Finance. Opening the event, Catherine McGuinness (Policy Chair at the City of London Corporation) emphasised the work that the City Corporation is doing to address the climate emergency:
“We have also drafted the Emissions Reduction (Local Authorities in London) Bill, which recently had its first reading in the House of Lords, with the aim of giving the City Corporation and London borough councils powers to control emissions.”
Sustainability is increasingly emerging as a commercially essential issue to business and as such has encouraged the growth of Green Finance in the UK market. You can read an extract from Catherine’s speech here.
The Green Finance Institute is the leading forum for public and private sector collaboration in Green Finance, focusing on financial solutions in three areas – overseas and sustainable commodity production across supply chains, resilient infrastructure in the UK, and the energy efficiency of UK buildings.
Following Catherine’s introduction David Ainsworth (CPA President and Chief Executive of CO—RE) moderated an expert panel that explored how KPIs are intended to change behaviour across the business and encourage collaboration. The panel discussion featured Kirsty Draper (Director (Central London Markets) at JLL);Emma Harvey (Director at the Green Finance Institute); Martin Leighton (Director of Corporate Finance at Great Portland Estates) and David Navalon Vaquero (Syndicated Loans & Acquisition Finance at Santander).
View a selection of the highlights from social media:
Delighted to be speaking at the @CPA_London Green Finance Seminar this morning. Read about the bold @cityoflondon initiatives that address sustainability in the Square Mile: https://t.co/2cWsTtU77e
— Catherine McGuinness (@City_McGuinness) February 21, 2020
We attended the @CPA_London event on #GreenFinance this
morning with some great insights from @cityoflondon, @Core_London, @GPE_plc, @GFI_green, @JLL and @bancosantander on the real estate sector’s role in this evolving strategy to combat #climatechange #realestate pic.twitter.com/uh7SLVfGgH— FTI Consulting Property Comms (@ftipropcomms) February 21, 2020
