PGIM Real Estate – Anuraag Jhawar – 2017

Goals

For any real estate portfolio, sustainability is a critical piece of asset security, performance, disclosure, and transparency. That’s why PGIM Real Estate wanted to improve upon its sustainability reporting and evaluate and implement energy efficiency projects at a portfolio-level, rather than the current fragmented asset-by-asset approach. EDF Climate Corps fellow Anuraag Jhawar was brought onboard to help overcome three challenges: evaluate impacts on investor returns, engage external stakeholders and improve sustainability disclosure. 

Solutions

Jhawar assisted PGIM Real Estate in advancing its sustainability programs by focusing on three separate initiatives:

• Sustainability Reporting – Jhawar assessed PGIM’s current reporting process to the Global Real Estate Sustainability Brenchmark (GRESB). To improve stakeholder engagement, he recommended broader use and adoption of Measurabl, a new environmental management tool for streamlining data collection.
• Electric Vehicle Charging – Jhawar created a program for asset managers and property managers to budget for EV chargers. Included was a survey to assess demand, financial modeling tools and a pre-qualification checklist to determine if EV charging is a good fit for an asset.
• PACE Financing – Jhawar evaluated how and where PACE financing could be used to fund energy efficiency projects, how much of the cost could be passed on to tenants and what the net improvement to cash flow would be.

Potential Impact

Based on these improvements, PGIM Real Estate’s sustainability team is better positioned to shorten the time and effort required to submit the GRESB survey, improve its scores for each fund and identify next steps to improving sustainability disclosure, such as issuing a GRI-aligned sustainability report. Jhawar’s work gives asset managers a way to budget for the installation of EV chargers, which they hope to increase by 100% over the next fiscal year. By using PACE financing, PGIM can also make the case to implement energy efficiency projects that otherwise would not have been considered. And, taking a portfolio-based approach to energy efficiency may directly improve investor returns for the fund.