Changes in Sustainability Reporting Dynamics Observed from ESG Measures Provided by Real Estate Companies in 2020 and 2021: Evidence from Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Dominika Galkiewicz  1@  , Bernd Wollmann  1  
1 : University of Applied Sciences Kufstein (UASK)

Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) related regulations such as the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) or the upcoming Taxonomy Regulation of the European Union (EU) had and will have a lasting impact on the real estate (RE) industry and other market participants. This study, therefore, compares the current European regulation with common sustainability reporting practices in the RE industry in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The aim is to investigate what type of information related to employees, social, and governance besides environmental issues is being regularly provided and by how many of the 55 largest RE firms in the years 2020 and 2021. In general, most of the measures are only reported by 20-40% of the firms on a mandatory or/and voluntary basis. The majority of the sustainability measures is more often reported in 2021 than in 2020. Irrespective of the positive development, however, there is still a lot of room for improving reporting quality to increase reader usability as small reporting frequencies are identifiable for the following “ESG” measures: violations of the code of conduct (mentioned by 1 time in 2020 and 2 firms in 2021), safety inspections of buildings (5 in 2020 and 8 in 2021), total number of suppliers (4 in 2020 and 6 in 2021), share of expenses for local suppliers in % (2 in 2020 and 3 in 2021), and obtained well-being certificates (5 in 2020 and 4 in 2021), energy consumption BOP MWh (6 in 2020 and 4 in 2021), emissions intensity of BOP kg CO2e/m2 (8 in 2020 and 7 in 2021) and Scope 3 t CO2e (7 in 2020 and 11 in 2021). The provided evidence highlights that it is key for individuals, organizations, and politicians introducing new sustainability reporting rules in Europe to understand that too complex rules may not be fully complied with and keep uniform EU taxonomy reporting requirements besides CSRD easy to apply in the future.


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