Ventas, Inc. – Ryan Rastegar – 2025
Summary
Ryan Rastegar worked on Ventas’s sustainability team to help analyze and advance key sustainability goals through data analysis, research, climate risk assessment and statistical analysis.
Goals
Ventas is a leading S&P 500 REIT owning 1,400 properties, including senior housing communities and outpatient medical buildings. Ryan’s goal was to analyze data from Ventas’s senior housing portfolio to determine if the 30% waste diversion goal by 2030 was appropriate and measured correctly. He assessed landfill, recycling and compost data, determining the best metric for measuring waste intensity. He also supported due diligence for new acquisitions, assessing climate risk and sustainability practices to help incorporate long-term sustainability into the property’s underwriting, aligning with Ventas’s goals including deriving 90% of senior housing NOI from operators conducting satisfaction surveys, achieving net zero operational emissions by 2040 and achieving 60% zero-carbon by 2030.
Solutions
Ryan’s solutions included: Analyzing and validating waste data from ~500 senior housing properties, identifying any inconsistencies across landfill, recycling and compost streams. He benchmarked waste intensity trends against residents per building, occupancy rates and square footage, producing insights on property waste reporting, dumpster size efficiency and pickup frequency. He identified trends across properties and operators to optimize waste hauling strategies. Creating heat maps illustrating property locations and recycling participation, recommending launching recycling programs in U.S. areas with strong existing practices to accelerate progress toward waste goals. Conducting sustainability due diligence on new acquisitions, analyzing climate risk reports, backup generator capacity and tenant engagement practices relating to Ventas’s corporate sustainability goals. Researching efficiency improvements for Ventas’s net zero targets, such as installing demand control ventilation (DCV) with HVAC replacements. DCV is part of Ventas’s net zero asset-specific roadmaps to achieve net zero by 2040, reducing energy costs by using room occupancy sensors to run HVAC equipment more efficiently.
Potential Impact
Ryan’s work helped analyze and provide recommendations to advance Ventas’s sustainability goals. When implemented, his recommendations to adjust waste hauling practices will help to lower reported waste intensity, optimize pickups and achieve higher diversion rates across Ventas’s operationally controlled senior housing portfolio, contributing to the 30% waste diversion by 2030 goal. His climate risk analysis of new acquisitions during due diligence informed investment decisions, and his identification of business interruptions and potential losses from climate-related weather events will remain part of Ventas’s due diligence process. His DCV research will help the sustainability team determine feasibility and implementation strategy for these projects as part of existing net zero roadmaps to reduce energy use intensity by 25% from 2022 to 2030.
