Sustainability in the real estate market
An interview with Olivier Wigniolle, CEO of ARE France
Allianz Real Estate | Munich, 08/18/2011
Mr. Wigniolle, is sustainable development an important issue in the real estate market environment today? When will it become an opportunity and when a threat to your existing assets?
Olivier Wigniolle: Sustainability is becoming more and more essential for the real estate industry and probably two factors explain that: the first one is that globally 42 percent of the energy is linked to buildings and real estates which means any action or plan to improve sustainability and energy consumption is also linked to real estate. Today we are setting up an action plan to improve the energetic efficiency of our buildings and the Allianz Group is part of this action plan.
The second factor relates to our clients and tenants who are asking for a high level of sustainability certification of our buildings. It means that we will have to invest a large sum of money in our buildings to improve the quality of our portfolio mostly in terms of sustainability.
Due to today's general economic environment it could be difficult for the next two or three years to have an interesting return of this part of our investment. But it's nor a threat nor an opportunity that we have to improve our portfolio in terms of sustainability. We will have to invest and the return will probably not be very attrative for the next two or three years.
How is ARE France dealing with the "Grenelle II" law? Will this affect asset planing?
Wigniolle: As you probably know "Grenelle II" is the French declination of a worldwide movement for sustainability. Clearly, a large part of "Grenelle II" is linked to real estate especially in terms of reduction of energy consumption within buildings. At Allianz France we are quite proactive with this new law:
We are part of the working groups that set up this new law, so we know quite well what is going on with this subject.
Also we have started very early with a full audit of our portfolio in terms of energy consumption as a first step. The second step is asking our tenants for the relevant data to know exactly the level of energy that is used by them. The third step comprises the launch of key projects to reduce the level of energy consumption in some of our main buildings.
