For real estate professionals, addressing climate change through development yields measurable benefits that aid in financing their properties, including improved health, air quality, and productivity.
This program will demonstrate that there are opportunities for everyone in real estate development to be part of the climate solution by understanding both the context and opportunity of this change and actively seeking to develop climate-friendly policies collaboratively with local agencies.
Participants will learn how to develop proactive solutions that create sustained competitive advantage through three sessions:
Session 1 – Climate Risk Assessment: Turning Science to Action to Improve Real Estate Market Resilience.
Joyce Coffee will teach with Nuin-Tara Key, Director, North America WTWCo to cover:
- Practical climate science 101: assessing real estate portfolio climate risks and understanding climate mitigation and adaptation.
- How climate change creates material financial risk for real estate
- The roles that real estate finance/investment and development play in market (in)stability in climate-changed communities, from mortgage origination to insurance policies and traditional methods of wealth generation.
- The disproportionate risk that climate change has for under-resourced communities.
- Physical climate-related disclosures such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure
- Climate finance innovations, including insurance and community development finance institutions
These topics will be reinforced through a case that covers an affordable housing grant program in California and building-level technologies.
Session 2 – Climate Resilience: Adaptation Solutions for Cities and the Benefits of Being Prepared
Joyce Coffee will teach with Katharine Burgess, AICP, Vice President of Land Use and Development, Smart Growth America.
This session will cover climate risk and adaptation as relevant to land use planning and housing development, considering the challenges amidst today’s housing access crisis. Topics covered will include:
- Land use planning, zoning, and strategies to advance climate adaptation by incentivizing development in locations less susceptible to climate hazards
- Equity impacts and connectivity between climate impacts and land use policies which have marginalized low-income communities and communities of color
- Climate risk as relevant to consumer market preference and housing choice
- The impact of climate risk and adaptation on governance and municipal finance
- Emerging trends related to climate migration, managed retreat, and city policy
- Partnership models for climate-adapted housing and development
These concepts will be reinforced through a case on Vision 2100 and “climate-informed” zoning in Norfolk, VA.
Session 3 – Climate Net Zero: Decarbonization Tools for Market Success
Joyce Coffee will teach with Ben Vatterott, Managing Director, Telesto Strategy to cover net zero in real estate and recommended actions for asset managers. Topics covered include:
- Net zero trends, including an overview of recent commitments, regulations, and investors pushing building operators to lower emissions, and real estate’s unique role in reducing national and global emissions
- Understanding real estate emissions, including key drivers, benchmarks and performance standards, and abatement strategies; including both existing and emerging technologies
- The financial case for net zero interventions
- Opportunities to embed net zero approaches into real estate design, due diligence, and portfolio management
- Risks to real estate portfolios in the transition from a fossil fuel economy and supporting a just transition
