BREEAM Webinar Series: Turning Climate Risk into Financial Strategy

On 2 December 2025, BRE continued its webinar series Future-proofing Real Estate: Turning Climate Risk into Financial Strategy, chaired by James Fisher of BRE and featuring an excellent panel of expert speakers. This session brought together the core themes shaping real estate finance – ESG performance, regulatory pressure, climate risk, and asset valuation – into a unified and actionable framework for turning climate risk into financial opportunity.

If you missed this webinar the recording is now available for you to view

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quotes

James Fisher, Head of Strategic Partnerships at BRE

“With version seven for new construction launched this year, and updated refurbishment and fit-out schemes on the way, resilience is becoming far more explicit and embedded. We’re strengthening guidance on risk assessments and climate projections, improving requirements for adaptation measures, and broadening our view to include community resilience and urban heat island effects. Just as importantly, we’re aligning BREEAM with evolving regulations, the EU Taxonomy, and wider market expectations. Looking ahead, BREEAM In-Use will support clearer reporting of physical climate risks, resilience actions, and even evidence for insurance premium negotiations, while continuing to promote nature-based solutions as a core part of resilience. “

Bruno Blavier, Head of ESG Real Estate at Swiss Life Asset Managers

“Our climate-risk approach is evolving, I’d say we’ve moved from simply assessing exposure to climate hazards to being pushed by investors to deliver and implement practical solutions alongside decarbonisation. Increasingly, when we budget CapEx for decarbonisation, investors ask how we can also future-proof assets as the climate changes. This is driving us to accelerate our vulnerability assessments and develop an interim, science-based methodology. Crucially, our action plans must now integrate resilience and decarbonisation, and we need to demonstrate how much risk is actually reduced, even without a standardised metric—using a methodology robust enough to show what a shift in risk score truly means for the asset.”

Chris Pyke. Chief Innovation Officer at GRESB

“When allocating capital between decarbonisation, resilience and nature-based interventions, I’d say the biggest challenge is regulatory uncertainty. A year ago we thought we understood the regulatory path; today it’s far less clear. What is clear, however, is the shift towards allocating CapEx to make assets better over the course of ownership and more attractive for future buyers. Decarbonisation planning is already well established, but resilience still lacks consistent metrics, making capital allocation harder. Yet we’re seeing real innovation, including insurance linked loans in the GRESB universe that tie resilience investment to financial outcomes. Ultimately, the balance is guided less by abstract principles and more by preparing assets for a high-value exit through integrated CapEx planning that brings decarbonisation and resilience together.”

Timothy Wright, Chief Capital Officer at Aroundtown

“When asked whether we see different market risk profiles and where climate strategy delivers financial upside, I’d say that across our jurisdictions the physical climate risk is real, but for us the transition risk is far more significant. Regulation is shifting constantly, and models are not yet aligned or reliable enough to give full certainty, so each company must take responsibility for its own guidance and resilience strategy. What we do see driving real value is market demand: tenants in places like the Netherlands show a much stronger focus on climate resilience than, for example, in Germany, and when tenants are willing to pay a premium for more resilient buildings, it becomes economically viable to invest—creating a genuine win-win for the business and the wider market.”