The global urgency for climate action has an upside companion in global opportunities for strategic investment that could improve people’s lives and yield sustainable returns.

COVID-19 has intensified pressure to support physical, social and emotional well-being within the built environment, but many investors, owners and managers were already embracing healthy building principles ahead of pandemic-triggered challenges.

Canadian commercial real estate assets are comparatively less exposed to the dire physical threats that extreme weather poses or has already served up in other global regions.

Multifamily and industrial properties are routinely lumped together as favoured investment assets, but asset managers face divergent degrees of difficulty when they seek to mine value from energy performance.

More than 50 per cent of participating Canadian portfolios were grouped in the top two brackets of results, with 11 earning 5-star status and six attaining a 4-star rating.

The 2020 race2reduce field boasts more than 1,730 buildings encompassing 248 million square feet of space in common areas and tenant premises — an increase from 650 buildings covering 95 million square feet in 2019.

The City of Winnipeg has invited commercial building owners and institutional facility managers to affix their Energy Star Portfolio Manager results on a publicly accessible map.

Technically, three real estate entities are ranked in the 2020 Clean200 list of publicly traded companies, but just two of them have conventional commercial real estate portfolios.

A widening scope of resources can be tapped to build increasingly sophisticated risk profiles, but sustainability practitioners note that data is often fragmented and difficult to obtain.

The mounting consequences of being stuck fast in the wrong place for an extended wrong time begin with soaring insurance premiums and end with stranded assets.

Major Canadian players figure among both GRESB investor members with full access to the data and the larger complement of management members that report and are benchmarked through the real estate assessment.

USGBC has released its LEED in Motion: Retail report, which highlights retail facilities that incorporate LEED and other sustainability practices.

The upfront cost has been projected at $13.8 million. The environmental repercussions of dismantling and discarding a 474,000-square-foot concrete and steel structure are more difficult to peg.

ESG provides a framework to set priorities, steer action and monitor progress toward more resilient assets, with 93 per cent of respondents reporting that criteria linked to sustainability, supporting local communities and shunning corruption influence their investment decisions.

Canada's Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance suggests there is more untapped opportunity than coordinated action in a market grappling with emerging imperatives for climate-related financial disclosure and integrating ESG measures.

Facilities management needs to have a voice in the C-suite. As business evolves, company leaders will require strategic facilities managers.

An office building in Markham, Ontario's technology hub plans to be the first net positive energy office building in Canada.