ESG monitoring and optimisation solutions and their return on investment: results of several case studies

Abstract

In 2021 the European Union defined the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) directive to foster sustainability. As the real estate sector is responsible for around 40% of the CO2 emissions, this industry has to carry out additional sustainability reporting and optimisation activities to prove its assets are fulfilling sustainability goals. Most investors concentrate on energy- and CO2 reduction, but ESG is much more. The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations give a perfect overview of the related topics but do not define KPIs. A second challenge is that the market has not honoured the additional tasks by now. Automation is necessary to reduce efforts of the activities The paper provides answers to the following research questions based on several case studies: What are the relevant parameters to prove ESG, focusing especially on the areas of "Environment"and "Social"as parts of the ESG directive? How can an IT support look like to automatise the data gathering efficiently? What is the Return on Investment of the suggested solution? The research focuses on historical buildings as they usually have a low degree of building automation. The solution is to enable efficient, automated optimisation of energy consumption and safeguard the well-being of the tenants with low investment.