Lilia Kouzmina, head of sustainability at Eastnine, is convinced that sustainability is now an essential component of the real estate business, and market leaders need to demonstrate advanced examples.
– Do office tenants expect sustainable solutions in business centers? How important is it to them?
– First of all, it depends a lot on what everyone considers a sustainable solution and on the tenant himself. I would say the general rule is that larger companies focus more on the formal side of sustainability, such as building certification or banning the use of certain materials in building construction or interior decoration and maintenance. For smaller companies, certification may be less important.
In general, human comfort, flexible design, indoor air quality, health and wellness features are undoubtedly of interest to all tenants regardless of their size.
Additionally, our efforts to reduce building energy emissions through energy monitoring and management benefit all tenants, resulting in tangible reductions in their utility bills each month.
– What exactly is Eastnine doing to meet these needs?
– To ensure that our properties meet the growing needs of tenants and are based on best practices, we use building sustainability certificates that take into account things like indoor air and water quality, lighting, energy efficiency.
At the beginning of this year, we reached our goal of 100 percent. certified portfolio.
In addition, the buildings we manage, with few exceptions, are certified with the highest scores, meeting the requirements of LEED Platinum and BREEAM Excellent.
For example, at the beginning of this year, our business center in Vilnius, Uptown Park, received a LEED Platinum rating with 85 points out of a possible 100. As part of our pre-certification work, we have installed solar panels, updated the building management system for more energy efficiency, installed more efficient water taps and additional energy meters to better control energy consumption where previously no measurements were made. We also conducted tenant surveys to make sure we didn’t overlook any office space quality issues.
Often, certification efforts may not be directly visible to our tenants, such as air quality, but the certification process in many cases has a huge impact on the quality of the office space and, of course, the well-being of the people who work there.
– But sustainable solutions arise not only because we become more conscious or demanding, but also because businesses are obliged to comply with legislation. How are regulatory changes affecting the real estate market?
– A new regulation that will affect all large and listed EU companies is the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which sets strict standards for sustainability reporting, including mandatory audits of sustainability information. This will undoubtedly give more impetus to the various services related to sustainability reporting and increase the pressure on companies that are late to incorporate sustainability into their reporting system.
There is already, and no doubt will be, much legislation as the industry is one of the world’s major emitters of carbon dioxide and it is relatively easy for legislators to regulate building operations. The more society pushes for obvious carbon reductions, the greater the pressure will be on property managers.
Given the current pace of legislation and social momentum, I believe that the future of many real estate companies will be greatly influenced by their ability to develop strategies aligned with the risks and opportunities of climate change. The pace of adaptation will be one of the determining factors in assessing the company’s credibility in the eyes of lenders, investors and customers.
– In general, in your opinion, how does Lithuania look in terms of sustainability?
– In my opinion, the Lithuanian market is not only capable of successfully traveling the path of reducing the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) on an equal footing with other EU members, but also has the prerequisites to lead the way. First of all, I would name institutions implementing coherent policies, conscious consumers and a low-fossil fuel market.
It seems that in Lithuania, compared to other countries, less is said, but more is done, and this is undoubtedly an opportunity for the region to position itself as a European leader. For example, when it comes to the energy market, in Lithuania 70-80 percent central heating systems do not use fossil fuels, and in Poland this share reaches only 12 percent.
We are seeing a lot of initiatives in the private space towards sustainable products and services.
Eastnine has also joined forces with other market participants in order to accelerate the development of proptech (a term that summarizes innovation and digital transformation in the real estate market) in the country, which is extremely important for sustainable development.
We hope that Lithuanian proptech will shine in the international context as well as fintech.
– What else does Eastnine intend to do in the near future to not only meet the requirements, but also demonstrate leadership in the field of sustainability?
– One of our strategic goals is to be a sustainability leader in the regions where we operate. Of course, the market must evaluate whether we succeed in this mission.
In our day-to-day operations, this means focusing on the areas where we can have the greatest impact, following best practices, innovating and testing new solutions. It goes without saying that our support of the regional proptech community also contributes to these efforts, as does our continued focus on improving energy efficiency. Our historical target was 25 percent. reduce the intensity of energy consumption in 2019-2025, by 2023 by reducing it by 22% at the end of the year, we are successfully achieving this goal.
These efforts bring both environmental and economic benefits to our customers – lower bills.
We are often faced with a situation where the requirements we raise are completely new to other market colleagues, which means that these types of questions have never been raised before. It then occurred to us that the kind of impact we create by initiating a conversation about pollution and energy efficiency where there was no such discussion before could be even more important than the impact we create by optimizing our portfolio. So this dialogue that we start with our market partners and suppliers, and the momentum and spillover effect that results, is to me what defines leadership at Eastnine.
The Swedish capital real estate company “Eastnine” currently manages 9 buildings in Lithuania, where “3 Burės”, “Vertas”, “Uniq”, “Uptown Park”, “S7” business centers, 3 business centers in Latvia – “Alojas Biroji” have been established. , “Valdemara centrs”, “Zala 1” – and the 1st business center in Poland – “Nowy Rynek D”.
Eastnine Sustainability Certifications
“Eastnine” business centers in Lithuania “3 Burės”, “Uniq”, “Uptown Park” are rated with “LEED Platinum” certificate, S7 – “BREEAM Outstanding”.
LEED is a high-end environmental rating system created more than 30 years ago. It is managed by the US Green Building Council. The system is designed to introduce good practices of sustainable construction, assess the environmental performance of the building and encourage the sustainable development of the building’s life cycle.
BREEAM is a certificate that provides an opportunity to comprehensively evaluate a building’s energy efficiency, environmental properties, ease of use and durability at each stage of the building’s life cycle. Building quality is evaluated by the independent organization Building Research Establishment (BRE).
