Welcome back to the Impact blog.

At present there’s a great deal of macro uncertainty around cost of living, geopolitical tension, and energy security – leading some to suggest that environmental targets and the push towards net zero should be deprioritised. Our position and commitments on sustainability and the environment remain unchanged – we believe that working to fight environmental degradation is now as important as ever. Read on for an overview of the steps we’ve taken in the past year and where we’ll focus in the months ahead.

Economic sustainability

Economic sustainability sits at the core of our sustainability framework, with the central belief that only a financially sustainable business can provide a long-term positive contribution to all our stakeholders and the environment. Equally, we know that being a responsible and environmentally conscious business will support our long-term ability to grow and thrive – meaning that we view sustainability as core to our broader business model and our ability to serve our customers and communities.

Our progress this year – The ‘E’ in ESG

Firstly, let us look at our progress towards our commitment to sourcing electricity for our portfolio from renewable sources. In the last financial year, we have increased the proportion of renewable electricity supplied to our portfolio to 94.6%– an 8.8 percentage point increase from 2020. In practice, this means much of our portfolio receives close to 100% renewable electricity to much of our portfolio as well as to newly acquired sites.

 We have also continued to support our tenants to reduce their own carbon emissions. In June 2021 we conducted our annual tenant survey which revealed that EV charging stations as well as waste management, emissions reductions, and renewable energy initiatives were all key areas of priority for our tenants, and we have been working to make progress across all these areas over the past year. As of March 2022, 15.6% of our sites have now been equipped with smart energy meters, compared to 7.5% in 2021. This progress means we remain on target to have smart meters across all our sites in Germany by 2027. Moreover, the proportion of our sites equipped with EV charging infrastructure increased from 1% as of March 2021 to 49% this year.

Our total emissions for this year have come to 42,920 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MTCO2-e), which compares to 37,721 MTCO2-e reported in March 2021. This increase relates to the initiatives we have taken during this year to better account for and address our carbon footprint - namely, the fact that our total emissions for the current year include 6,777 MTCO2-e of embodied carbon emissions, which were not included in our calculations last year and are critical for understanding the full scope of our emissions.

 Moreover, we have centralised our waste management, allowing for better data collection and enabling us to establish that 42.3% of our waste was recycled and a further 54.4% was converted from waste to energy, with only the remaining 3.3% going to landfill. This is a strong reflection of our commitment to year-on-year improvement as part of our promise to strive to deliver tangible benefits to the environment and world around us.

 Biodiversity

 Finally, as I mentioned in a recent blog, we recognise the importance of protecting biodiversity and the natural environment and take our responsibility through the assets we own extremely seriously.  Across Germany we have over 500,000 sqm of green space and we are focused on protecting and enhancing these spaces. Our work is concentrated on three areas where we believe we can have a direct and positive impact – trees, flowers, and bees. Through a partnership with Tree Nation, a total of 10,458 trees were planted this year, accounting for 1,129.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide being absorbed through reforestation projects covering the Amazon, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Nepal, and Spain.

 On ‘flowers’, we have identified over 30,000 sqm of green space that were previously lawns which are being converted into natural wildflower meadows. To date, 21,559 sqm have already been converted during the year, with the remainder to be completed in 2022. All these additional wildflower meadows provide both a protective habitat and food supply for insects and smaller animals.

It’s great news then that our collaboration with Hektar Nektar to foster a 10% increase in the overall bee population in Austria and Germany by 2028 is also looking very promising. As of April 2022, we estimate that we have already enabled the bee population in these hives to have increased to 1,000,000.

 Looking ahead

As we look to the future, a large part of our focus will be fully integrating the environmental programme of BizSpace – our recent acquisition in the UK – into the broader Group approach and programme.

BizSpace’s environmental programme is in its early stages and as part of the integration we have started a detailed assessment of the EPC ratings for the UK property portfolio. This first phase – currently underway – involves undertaking a review of the EPC data requirements to build an accurate baseline on the current ratings, as well as understanding BizSpace’s GHG emissions. Only once these reviews are complete will we be in a position to begin the implementation phase of a programme of improvements.

Later this year, we plan to publish a dedicated report on our ESG strategy and actions in order to provide further context to our ambitions. Overall, it’s been a year of strong progress for us at Sirius in terms of our environmental goals and I’m proud of the great strides we have made across our entire ESG strategy.

Closing thoughts

We recognise that there’s always more to be done and as always, I look forward to sharing our progress in the months ahead. In a future Impact blog, I look forward to discussing the ‘S’ in ESG.

 In the immediate term, we have been closely monitoring developments in the EU’s Green Taxonomy and its implications for businesses like ours, and I’ll share my thoughts on this shortly.