Allianz Real Estate expert interviews

Interview with Christoph Wildgruber - Head of Sustainability at Allianz Real Estate

Christoph Wildgruber started with Allianz Real Estate in 2008 as Head of Organisation/IT and is managing the Sustainability initiative of Allianz Real Estate since 2010. He is a civil engineer and holds an MBA in International Real Estate Management. This enables Christoph to combine both the technical and commercial side of sustainability in real estate.

Allianz Real Estate | Munich, 05/04/2011

Why did Allianz Real Estate start a sustainability program?

Christoph Wildgruber: We started to look into the sustainability area mainly because of two reasons. On the environmental side, the Allianz Group committed itself to a significant reduction of carbon emissions until 2012 and the building sector accounts for a huge portion. In addition, a business case in real estate is emerging for sustainability.

Sustainability and the journey towards a low carbon economy is not just another trend but will deeply impact the real estate business as such. There are two main perspectives we see: One is the market side where tenants are developing a growing demand for sustainable (i.e. energy efficient) space, the other of course is the changing regulatory requirements in all our investment areas. Especially in France we already face a quite advanced regulatory system with the effects coming from a new environmental law.

What does that mean for your business?

Wildgruber: On the acquisition side we have sustainability criteria such as the environmental performance implemented into our investment process. That doesn't mean that we only buy "green buildings" but that we exactly know what it takes to transform a newly acquired building to our standards.

For the asset management of more than 1,200 assets that Allianz owns globally increased transparency about sustainability criteria and performance is imperative. This transparency will lay the foundation to integrate a sustainable strategy into the business plans of each asset.

How do you get detailed information about the environmental performance of your asset?

Wildgruber: After finalizing a study in 2010 on the energy efficiency in real estate and the related carbon emission we experienced how difficult it is to collect environmental information on buildings. In Europe most of the relevant information like individual energy consumption is available only on the tenant level. This is something we have to take into account when collecting necessary information.

In addition to those hands-on activities and learnings from our own portfolio we continuously grow our knowledge and exchange our sustainability related experience with other players in the market. We start to partner with those companies and industry associations with regard to influence the setting of new standards.

One good example of this cooperation is the Green Rating Alliance to assess the individual building performance in the dimensions energy, carbon emission, water, waste and travel. With this information our property managers are able to come up with specific actions for every single asset. We can then decide if a change within the lighting system or the HVAC will make a difference or not.

Generally we distinct between so-called quick wins and long term investments. The former meaning improvements with low investments like changes within the building operation or partnering with the tenants and discuss on how they use a building. The latter are measures with higher investment costs like structural changes to the building for example changing its facade or glazing.

Moreover we already started to collect data according to a common sustainability metrics within ARE Group for each asset to create the possibility for a standardized comparison and reporting.

What is personally driving you?

Wildgruber: The fact that I have the possibility to change or adjust the way we conduct our real estate investment business and include new perspectives in the environment sector motivates me a lot.

As our global real estate portfolio is already bigger than 18.8 billion euros I have the opportunity to see positive effects which would not be possible in a smaller scale and local working environment. With real estate accounting for 40 percent of the energy consumed in the EU, we can together with our tenants pull a huge level to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.