(J06) Powering the Next Generation of Market Transformation: Green Building, ESG, and Sustainable Finance

For more than 25 years, the green building community has shared a vision for market transformation: defining and recognizing places that benefit people and the environment. The result is thousands of certified green building projects that are more efficient, less polluting, and healthier for their occupants. Over the last decade, our industry has seen the emergence of the concepts of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting and sustainable finance as new tools for market transformation. Today, green building, ESG reporting, and sustainable finance are increasingly used together to inform investors, recognize leadership, and provide working capital. This session will provide a global overview of this emerging area of practice with a focus on complementary and synergistic aspects of green building, ESG reporting, and sustainable finance. Three international experts will address ten Big Picture questions about the interaction between these issues. The questions will include topics like definitions for financial materiality, contrasting regulatory approaches in the US and Europe, the role of sustainable finance taxonomies, and more. We will consider market priorities, including the use of green building in the GRESB benchmark and, more broadly, in green and sustainable bonds. Finally, we will look forward and consider how green building and ESG will work together in the next generation of financial products, including a focus on impact frameworks, the role of green building certification, and post-issuance performance measurement. We will illustrate key concepts with examples from the field, such as green building-based green bonds and sustainability linked loans. Participants will come away with a sense of the opportunities and challenges for green building, ESG, and sustainable finance to power the next generation of market transformation.