Expanding the ESG Toolkit with the Dow Jones Select Green Real Estate Securities Indices

This article is reprinted from the Indexology blog of S&P Dow Jones Indices.

INTRODUCTION

More and more market participants are integrating ESG considerations into their investment process.  Given the large size and specialized nature of real estate assets, the investment community has expressed the need for sophisticated tools to accurately identify real estate companies that own more or less sustainable properties, in order to integrate this information seamlessly into their investment process.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has collaborated with GRESB, a leader in evaluating ESG characteristics of real estate companies, to create the Dow Jones Select Green Real Estate Securities Indices (RESI).  The indices, which use data from GRESB, are designed to reflect the investment characteristics of conventional real estate benchmarks but with an improved sustainability profile, thereby providing a sustainable alternative to existing mainstream real estate offerings.

ABOUT THE INDEX SERIES

The Dow Jones Select Green RESI Series is based on the Dow Jones Select RESI Series, which are widely used, listed real estate indices with approximately USD 23 billion in index-linked assets.  The indices also use GRESB’s widely followed real estate assessment, which incorporates property-level data that measure such criteria as energy and water usage, carbon emissions, and leasable area covered by green building certifications—offering a deep, specialized sustainability analysis for real estate companies.  The series currently includes the following headline regional indices.

• Dow Jones Global Select Green RESI
• Dow Jones Global Ex-U.S. Select Green RESI
• Dow Jones U.S. Select Green REIT