Product Spotlight: GRESB Reporting Integration

If you are a business, corporate entity, or organization looking to further your Sustainability Reporting journey with GRESB benchmarking, WatchWire can provide the guidance and data processing necessary to be successful. GRESB (formally known as; Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) is a sustainability rating and ranking organization driven by investors who are committed to evaluating the environmental, social, and governance performance of real assets in real estate portfolios and infrastructure. WatchWire by Tango is a GRESB Premier Data Provider, helping real estate portfolios accurately and quickly report their key sustainability indicators to GRESB. Through our sustainability and energy management and analytics platform, we acquire, audit, and track utility invoice and emissions data, provide guidance on renewable investments and energy efficiency projects, and integrate directly with numerous sustainability reporting frameworks. 

• Data Coverage: As a GRESB Premier Partner, WatchWire helps Aggregate 70% Of GRESB Reporting Requirements and automates the integration of asset data to the portal.
• Data Completeness and Accuracy: Our pre and post-ingestion data auditing features ensure that your results achieve up to 99.95% accuracy, which will improve GRESB scores and overall performance. 
• Streamlined Integration: Automatically generate GRESB Real Estate Assessment responses from the platform’s data, covering most asset-level questions.
• Enhanced Flexibility: Utilize tools like bulk data capture grids, location-level instructions, and account tagging to review, categorize, manage, and update responses before submission.
• Support from GRESB AP-Certified Experts: Tackling GRESB reporting with a partner offers a range of resources, including informative webinars, customized resources, cheat sheets, and proactive communication, ensuring you are well-prepared at every stage. 

How it works 

WatchWire streamlines GRESB reporting by automatically populating client data into an asset-level spreadsheet. This spreadsheet can be easily downloaded from WatchWire and uploaded directly to the GRESB portal, eliminating the need for any manual data entry into the asset level spreadsheet.

What does our platform track?

• Asset and reporting characteristics
• Building Certifications
• Energy usage
• GHG emissions
• Renewable energy 
• Waste
• Water

Utilize our platform throughout the entirety of the GRESB reporting season:

Automate key parts of the GRESB performance and development components:

• Performance: Reporting Characteristics R1.1 and R1.2
• Development: Reporting Characteristics: DR1.1 and DR1.2
• Performance: Building Certifications BC1.1, BC1.2, and BC2
• Performance: Efficiency Measures / Risk Assessment: RA2, RA3, RA4, and RA5
• Performance: Energy (EN1), GHG Emissions(GH1), Water (WT1), and Waste (WS1)

Step 1: Tracking Key Characteristics of the Asset Level Spreadsheet 

• Property Level GRESB Characteristics Tab: A new dedicated tab on the property level in WatchWire, under the Invoice Management module, allows clients to maintain a detailed trail of asset-level GRESB-specific data, including asset characteristics, reporting characteristics, efficiency measures, and building certifications. The GRESB Property Characteristics Tab in WatchWire help manage information relating to Assets that may change year on year.
• Bulk Data Import: Bulk import helps clients efficiently manage large volume changes to asset level data and allows upload of data for all cells in an asset-level spreadsheet, streamlining data entry.

Step 2: Tracking and Integration of Performance Data for the Asset Level Spreadsheet

WatchWire supports the automatic ingestion of utility bills and interval data, in addition to the upload of data for off-site recs, supply contracts/bundled recs, green tariffs, commodity data, and tenant data. All of the performance data that is captured in WatchWire flows directly into the performance tabs of the asset level spreadsheet: Energy, GHG, Water, and Waste.  

• Account level GRESB Characteristics Tab: A new dedicated tab on the account level also allows clients to manage their GRESB performance data, including indicating whether they would like to report performance data on a whole building

Step 3: Data Audit and Assurance

Our AI-enabled pre- and post-ingestion auditing process​, as well as customized alerts for data anomalies, ensures the highest grade data quality and coverage for GRESB evaluation criteria. In addition, these WatchWire features help clients audit and verify data and import reports that will help them analyze their usage / see data gaps​:

• Sentence Filter Report: helps to easily display consumption/supply cost/delivery cost/total cost/demand/emissions for a selection of properties for custom commodities, properties, metrics, and time. ​
• Emissions Summary Report: provides GHG data for given assets over a given time period​
• GRESB Asset Level Spreadsheet Report: is an asset level spreadsheet, pre filled for portal submission. The GRESB Asset Level Spreadsheet template can be downloaded from WatchWire, pre-filled out with your data wherever relevant. The remaining sections can be filled out manually in collaboration with the WatchWIre team.

Step 4: Exporting Reports and Data to GRESB

•  GRESB Template: Used to collect asset-level information in the GRESB format. This report can be uploaded to the GRESB Assessment Portal.

Customer Support and Consulting: 

• January: Tango’s Energy & Sustainability team begins by adding any additional sites, setting up utilities, and initiating data checks.
• February/March: Tango’s Energy & Sustainability team upload and ensure complete coverage of all for property level components of the GRESB asset level spreadsheet, including asset characteristics, building certifications, efficiency measures, and reporting characteristics.
• April: With the opening of the GRESB portal, our specialists work on ensuring complete data coverage and data transfer from WatchWire to the asset level spreadsheet.
• May and June: Focus shifts to data quality and intensity checks, with experts resolving any issues to ensure precise data for submission.

Discover Our Newer Features: 

• GRESB Characteristics Tab: A new dedicated tab on the account and property level allows clients to maintain a detailed trail of asset-level GRESB-specific data.
• Bulk Data Import: You can now bulk import data for all cells in an asset-level spreadsheet, streamlining data entry.
• Effective Data Validation with Standardized Inputs: To increase data accuracy and reduce outliers and errors during checks, the platform has standardized values for floor area covered, date of reporting, etc.
• Comprehensive GRESB Data Configuration: The platform now offers comprehensive account-level characteristics that can be customized for different reporting years, ensuring flexibility and precision in data configuration for each year (e.g., 2022 vs. 2023).

Importance 

Why Report to GRESB?

Within the broader sustainability reporting landscape—characterized by a myriad of standards, frameworks, and rating agencies—GRESB serves as a crucial benchmark, providing investors and companies with valuable insights into their environmental responsibility, labor practices, and corporate governance.

GRESB gives an in-depth, all-encompassing analysis of the ESG performance of a company, fund, or asset. GRESB scores give you quantitative insight into your ESG performance in absolute terms, over time, against industry standards, and peer comparisons. The key benefits of the GRESB Real Estate Assessment are as follows: 

• Following investor mandates: Pension funds, banks, other institutional investors may be requiring or quasi-mandating GRESB participation (Blackrock, Ares, etc)
• Capitalize on opportunities: Allows both owners, managers, and investors to identify risk management and energy efficiency opportunities by way of the scoring (ie. lower scores in certain aspects like waste, point to opportunities for improvement in value-driven areas)
• Standardized peer benchmarking: Ranking your business against others may provide PR notoriety in the industry and attract clients and talent
• Keeping up with industry standards: GRESB is aligned with international reporting frameworks, such as GRI, PRI, SAS, DJSI, TCFD, Paris Climate Agreement, UN SDGs, and region and country-specific climate disclosure 

What is the value of WatchWire in the GRESB Reporting Process?

Achieving comprehensive data coverage is highly prioritized in the GRESB scoring success and weighted more favorably than year-on-year performance improvements. Collaborating with a GRESB-affiliated premium data partner, such as Tango Energy & Sustainability, can significantly streamline the reporting process AND provide opportunities for maximizing scores through automated data acquisition and operationalizing data management. A direct API connection to the GRESB portal facilitates audited data transfer directly from WatchWire, allowing automatic updates of performance data each year without having to spend time and resources collecting the data, manually updating the data, or uploading spreadsheets to the reporting site.

About WatchWire by Tango

WatchWire is a market-leading sustainability and energy data management platform that uses cloud-based software to collect, automize, and analyze utility, energy, and sustainability data metrics. WatchWire streamlines, automates, and standardizes your sustainability reporting process by integrating directly and/or providing reporting exports to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, LEED Arc, GRESB, CDP, SASB, GRI, and more. The platform provides customizable dashboards, which allow asset managers, sustainability managers, engineers, and more to monitor individual key performance indicators (KPIs) and create custom views for specific use cases. WatchWire provides:

• Automatic collection of energy, utility, sustainability, and emissions data through real-time metering. The data is then fully audited and organized all in one place
• GHG emissions tracking
• Goal tracking (e.g., Net Zero, SBTi, waste diversion)
• Carbon offset view of power purchases from the grid vs. on-site renewables generated vs. off-site RECs.
• Opportunities to implement projects (track EEMs) and monitor distributed energy resource production (e.g. on-site solar)

To discover more about WatchWire and its capabilities, you can visit our website, blog, or resource library, request a demo, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest energy and sustainability insights, news, and resources.