Building certification 

Bouwinvest uses various independent certification methods to manage its Dutch portfolios’ sustainability performance. This enables Bouwinvest to monitor whether its buildings exceed legal requirements in terms of energy efficiency, environmental quality and safety. Almost the entire Dutch portfolio (99%) had BREEAM or GPR labels in 2023 (99% in 2022).

The Residential Fund and the Healthcare Fund use GPR labels which map the sustainability of a building in terms of energy, environment, health, quality of use and future value. When purchasing new residential and healthcare properties, Bouwinvest requires an average GPR Building score of at least 8. The maximum achievable GPR score is 10.  

Bouwinvest uses BREEAM certification to assess its Retail, Office and Hotel fund properties. BREEAM measures the quality of real estate based on nine criteria including noise, air quality, thermal comfort, light and visual comfort, plus the quality of use.

Four of the five Dutch sector funds retained their GRESB five-star ratings in 2023, the highest achievable score. One of the Dutch sector funds decreased from a 5 star rating to a 4 star rating, which is still in line with Bouwinvests’ target that at least 80% of its investments fall within the 4/5 star range. The position of Bouwinvest’s real estate funds in the GRESB benchmark gives a clear picture of Bouwinvest’s position compared with other real estate investors and highlights Bouwinvest’s focus on performance (energy, GHG, water and waste) and management (risk management issues related to ESG, policy focused on the separate components of ESG and stakeholder engagement).  

For its international investments, Bouwinvest focuses on increasing the GRESB scores of current investments and on encouraging investment managers to either improve their GRESB scores or to participate in the programme if they are not already doing so. Due to the wide variety of sectors and real estate strategies, Bouwinvest applies different targets for its international investments compared to its Dutch funds. The performance of the International mandates was on average above this target.

Our goal is for at least 80 percent of invested capital to be above-average in terms of sustainability (GRESB 4 or 5 stars) by the end of 2023. At the end of 2023, Bouwinvest has 83.2% invested in above-average sustainable investments.