Powerco achieves 5 star rating in the 2021 Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark

Powerco has achieved a 5 star rating for its sustainability efforts in the 2021 Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB).

GRESB is an international survey that sets a global standard for environmental, social and governance (ESG) benchmarking.  
Since 2016, Powerco has annually (with the exception of 2020, due to COVID priorities) assessed its ESG performance using GRESB, submitting its survey under the infrastructure section alongside more than 500 other businesses.

For its 2021 Infrastructure Assessment, Powerco received the highest GRESB rating (5 Stars), placing it in the top 20% of companies for that benchmark – 11th out of the 549 companies in that category.

Carol O’Sullivan, Corporate Sustainability Manager says the company is proud of this result and the fact it has consistently achieved this five-star rating since its first survey back in 2016.  Continuing to work on the company’s sustainability strategy and actions has meant that this year we achieved our highest score of 97/100.  

“For Powerco, sustainability isn’t just about our assets but about balancing the needs of our people and communities, our environment and the financial health of our company. Our GRESB ranking reflects those efforts,” says Carol O’Sullivan.

“It’s useful to understand how our ESG performance compares to similar companies worldwide and where our most material improvement areas could be.”

Some of the areas that contributed to Powerco’s improved performance include:

• the introduction of publicly available sustainability reporting 
• the inclusion of social issues into company policies and procedures, such as promoting ethical practice in supply chains
• our leading cyber security and network resilience governance programme
• producing a publicly available and verified Greenhouse gas emissions report, and a roadmap to reduce direct and indirect emissions across the business
• efforts to improve inclusion and diversity by introducing targets, policies and reporting.

Powerco also continues to score highly in health and safety procedures and governance, and stakeholder engagement areas.

To find out more about Powerco’s sustainability initiatives, click here.