Climate risk assessment in global real estate investing

Climate change is affecting the mindset of investors globally in a multitude of ways. A term originally defined for companies in the coal and oil industry ‘stranded asset risk’, is increasingly part of the broader investment vocabulary and linked to climate change. As a result of increasing awareness but also the Paris Climate Agreement, more and more real estate investors are taking climate-related financial risks into account. From a real estate perspective, properties are unlikely to become truly stranded as could happen with an oil well, but they do run the risk of becoming obsolete if they are no longer capable of generating rental income. In our view climate change related factors could cause property obsolescence through two partially related channels. The first is due to a lack of adherence to local regulation which forbids landlords to lease space and as such generate income.

Prepared by PGGM