(E07) Understanding and Tackling Real Estate Scope 3 Emissions

Our Scope 3 emissions are by far the largest source of emissions for real estate, but few real estate companies understand their Scope 3 emissions. And, when companies do not understand their Scope 3 emissions, those critical emissions are easy to ignore. This fun, interactive presentation will provide a real-world case study of how Lendlease, a global company which constructs, owns, and operates buildings, has applied existing protocols around measuring Scope 3 emissions to come up with a working Scope 3 inventory. The speaker, Sara Neff, Head of Sustainability for Lendlease Americas, has a long track record of being an entertaining speaker, and Lendlease is one of the very few real estate companies that have set an ambitious Scope 3 reduction target (Absolute Zero on Scope 3, without offsets, by the end of 2040). Therefore, this presentation is well-positioned to inspire attendees to start understanding and tackling their Scope 3 emissions.

The presentation will begin with brief quiz in which audience members can guess whether or not certain items might be part of a scope 3 inventory, such as transmission losses along utility lines or the gas used to transport steel to a project site. After that, Sara will provide a painless synthesis of the existing guidance around understanding Scope 3 emissions, using the following 3 principles: 1) Screen for Materiality 2) Assess Relevance 3) Start Accounting.

Next, Sara will take the audience through the process Lendlease undertook to apply these principles to understand its Scope 3 emissions. Because Lendlease has a construction business, a development business, and a business that operates existing assets, this process will be relevant for many different attendees. After sharing those results, Sara will present examples of hypothetical companies to help the audience learn how to apply these principles on their own. For example, she will take the example of a commercial real estate company trying to understand if its operational waste should be reported as part of its Scope 3 emissions. Audience members will huddle in teams to come up with answers, which will then be shared with he group and discussed.

Sara will wrap up with a future-facing discussion of how to use a Scope 3 inventory to drive change. Using Lendlease’s construction business as an example she will demonstrate how this inventory helped Lendlease prioritize low-carbon materials and electrification of processes over other practices to quickly drive down Scope 3 emissions for that team.

This presentation will make more real, and less scary, a process that real estate has been avoiding for too long: understanding managing Scope 3 emissions. As these are the largest source of emissions for buildings, and few are tackling them, this presentation has the potential to be transformative for driving down emissions in the real estate sector.