The newly released 2025 GRESB benchmark shows year-over-year improvement in the average global score for environmental, social and governance (ESG) results in commercial real estate portfolios, along with an 8.2 per cent drop in Canadian participation. This year, 78 Canadian entities reported to the annual assessment — which measures 15 variously weighted elements of asset-level performance and portfolio-wide policies and practices — down from 85 in 2024.
That’s a trend also seen in the United States, where participation slipped by 3.7 per cent, from 456 entities in 2024 to 439 in 2025. Globally, though, the response level held relatively steady, with a total of 2,382 entities contributing to the average global score of 79 out of 100 possible points.
This year’s global average improved by 3.1 points from 2024, and first-time participants also delivered a new high average score of 68, up from 62 in 2024. Almost 60 per cent of total respondents achieved scores that were at least on par with the global average, while the top 40 per cent significantly surpassed it. This year, scores for the top 20 per cent, attaining a GRESB 5-star ranking, ranged from 97.7 to 89.5. Scores for the penultimate 20 per cent, in the 4-star tier, ranged from 89.5 to 84.7, and scores for the 20 per cent within the 3-star level ranged from 84.7 to just shy of 79.
GRESB administrators highlight ongoing progress in data coverage that’s giving the benchmark’s investor subscribers more insight into asset-level resource consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste diversion. This year saw a modest decrease in average energy consumption (0.43 per cent) and GHG emissions (1.3 per cent) across the total database of reported assets, but a slight uptick (0.41 per cent) in water consumption. As well, 22 per cent of reporting assets are defined as “highly energy efficient” when pegged against the ASHRAE energy use intensity standard for existing buildings.
On the policy front, two-thirds of participating entities have targets to reach net-zero emissions, up from roughly 50 per cent just two years earlier. Nevertheless, buy-in varies considerably across global regions, with 74.3 per cent of participating European entities pursuing net-zero versus 48 per cent of respondents in the Americas.
In an online commentary accompanying the 2025 results release, GRESB’s chief innovation officer, Chris Pyke, acknowledged an “international divergence in opinions and experiences” that’s filtering through to investors’ and real estate entities’ motivations for subscribing to or reporting to GRESB. To illustrate, he pointed to a GlobeScan survey released in the summer of 2025, in which 91 per cent of participating sustainability professionals employed in North America reported that they either perceived or had experienced backlash against their roles and agendas.
“That’s obviously dominated by the United States in this context,” Pyke said. “But, one way or the other, we see a global divergence in lived experience of sustainability professionals in this moment in time.”
Despite the small drop in participants from Canada and the U.S. this year, the Americas database has now broadened to include 19 real estate entities from Brazil, 18 from Mexico, three from Chile and one from Columbia. Collectively, they achieved an average performance score of 67 (calculated across 10 elements), which accounts for 70 per cent of the total score, and an average management score of 92 per cent (calculated across five elements), worth 30 per cent of the total score.
Real estate entities in the Americas were generally strongest in performance elements related to tenants and community, risk assessment, and data monitoring and review, while the lowest average scores were related to waste diversion and water consumption. There was year-over-year improvement in the average scores for all elements. Results and issues specific to Canada will be discussed in a forum in Toronto on Nov. 17.
Making the case for GRESB’s expedience in the face of backlash, Pyke drew connections to three prime concerns for investors and real estate managers: operating costs; physical risk; and energy grid stability. He maintained that building performance, resilience and on-site renewable energy sources, along with portfolio-wide strategies to enhance those outcomes, are indisputably sound objectives to counter rising costs and to benefit from tenants’ flight to quality. GRESB provides relevant insights, tied to credible metrics, on all these concerns.
“The rising price of retail electricity and a limited topline growth in rents is putting a premium on efficiency and expense control. We also see a priority on physical risk and resilience that’s most directly expressed through insurance costs — a concern about getting insurance, keeping insurance and mitigating rises in insurance rates over time,” Pyke tallied.
As well, investors are gaining a more sophisticated understanding of peak demand management — perhaps in sync with the emerging prominence of data centres within the alternative assets class.
“It’s not just your average annual energy consumption. It’s (a question of ) how does the consumption for a piece of real estate or infrastructure impact the grid when the grid needs it most?” he maintained. “That issue of the timing and the location of energy demand is emerging to be just as important as average annual consumption.”
