Sustainability, green and the acronyms, ESG and DEI, continue to lose ground as all-purpose terminology within commercial real estate circles. The U.S. Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC) joins the list of organizations adopting wordy euphemisms, with the recent rebranding of its Sustainability Initiative to the Property Risk & Resilience Committee.
The association, representing more than 420 member companies in the U.S. finance industry, announced the new name earlier this month in tandem with the release of its biannual sustainability trends report, which tracks the momentum of environmental standards, regulatory policies, industry practices and societal concerns that have existing or potential implications for commercial real estate and commercial real estate finance. The initial baseline report, released in June 2023, was dubbed the ESG trends report and set out 15 sustainability indicators.
The winter 2026 iteration still monitors 13 of the original indicators, but no longer tracks progress of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) rules related to disclosure of climate-related risk (now sidelined) or the uptake of green leases. One new indicator, related to the demand for sustainable data centres, has also been added in the intervening period.
CREFC characterizes the rebranding as “a change that better reflects our members’ evolving priorities and mission” arising from an escalating need to understand climate-related risk. It defines resilience as “strategies that strengthen the built environment, through energy efficiency, emissions reduction and smart infrastructure investment, to ensure properties remain desirable and viable over time” — seeming to overlap with a concept also known as sustainability.
Analysis within the latest trends report may provide some insight on CREFC’s rationale. Discussion of the availability of alternative financing for green and social impact projects (one of the 14 indicators) reports an unprecedented year-over-year dip in the volume of ESG bond issuance, which fell from $922 billion for the 12 months ending on Nov. 7, 2024 to $918 billion during the 12 months following the election of the current White House administration. While acknowledging economic factors that have undermined the bond market in general, the report highlights another impediment.
“Green bonds face an additional challenge as U.S. companies are more selective about branding their funding (loans or debt) as ‘green’ in the current political environment,” it states.
That’s also in keeping with the findings of 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.
