The Future of Real Estate for a Better World

by Cynthia Curtis, Senior VP of sustainability stakeholder engagement at JLL

Striving for something better is a very human thing. Whether it be a better house, better clothes, a better job, it’s our nature to seek a future, which is an improvement upon the current state. The definition of better, of course, can be as unique as the individual. But when you widen the aperture and pose the question, ‘what does a better world look like?’, it forces consideration of the collective.

JLL’s purpose is to shape the future of real estate for a better world. This isn’t a new purpose for JLL, for over 250 years we’ve been at the heart of real estate bringing diverse thinking and perspectives to investors and businesses worldwide. But over the last 18 months we’ve delved deeper into the various dimensions of that statement. The pandemic, for example, resulted in a top-to-bottom evaluation of our role, as a leading real estate and investment management services firm, in contributing to the future of health. But with the built environment accounting for approximately 38% of global energy consumption and 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions, we knew addressing climate change was fundamental to our purpose. For us – and the title of our new Global Sustainability Report 2020 – a better world is a net zero world. 

Hence, in May 2021, we took the bold step of committing to net zero carbon by 2040 across all areas of our operations, as well as all the sites we manage for our clients and our extensive global corporate supply chain. Further, we’ll deliver against that goal with no more than 5% offsets, fully abating 95% of our 2018 baseline GHG emissions.

Read Cynthia's very informative article here - https://greenmoney.com/a-better-world

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