Amro shaves five years off Net Zero Carbon target

April 20th, 2022

NZC2025 pledge reflects urgency of climate crisis

Amro Partners has brought forward its pledge to become a Net Zero Carbon business by 2030 to a new more ambitious NZC2025 goal, reflecting the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for the built environment sector to act more quickly to tackle emissions.

By placing sustainability at the centre of every business decision, not only in the design, construction and operation of new developments, and the adoption of decarbonisation technology, but also in operational management across procurement, marketing, finance, and HR, we will reduce our carbon footprint to zero by 31 December 2025.

In addition to protecting the environment, we are confident that our ambitious Net Zero strategy will deliver enhanced investment returns and generate significant benefits in terms of attracting long term capital, navigating the planning process, and securing higher occupancy and rents for our developments.

Amro’s Residential Living portfolio, which comprises Build to Rent and PBSA projects in the UK and continental Europe, is being developed to be the leading portfolio of residential assets from an ESG perspective. Our PBSA projects in Seville, Valencia, and Pamplona were recently awarded BREEAM Outstanding ratings making them the most sustainable residential rental assets in Europe. The strategy for our first micro-living project in the UK, The Rex in Kingston, has pivoted from new build to retrofit to ensure the project achieves the highest possible sustainability credentials due to the low embodied carbon use, far surpassing RICS 2030 building emissions targets.

We are building an in-house tech team and developing a technology stack that will provide detailed data on embodied carbon use and building across all our projects, reporting on key energy and wellness metrics. We will apply the CRREM (Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor) toolkit, which provides the real estate industry with transparent, science-based decarbonisation pathways aligned with the Paris Climate Goals.

Co-Founder and MD Raj Kotecha said: “Action by the built environment sector to tackle climate change is gathering pace but the sector needs to move more quickly and be more ambitious in its goals. The significant increases in energy costs we are seeing will speed up our transition to a clean energy future, driven by investor appetite for high ESG projects and, more than ever, consumer demand for ‘green’ homes that are low-cost to run.

We believe there will be a meaningful ‘green premium’ in yields for assets that score highly against ESG metrics, as well as benefits in terms of the planning process and occupancy and rental levels achieved. Pushing ourselves further in the race to zero is the right thing to do and it makes sound business sense too.”