A square meter of forest and for every square meter of built-up area there is an extra meter of forest. This is only one part of the story of the path to carbon neutrality of the largest Czech industrial real estate developer CTP.
The company aims to achieve its operational carbon neutrality in 2021 and it is one of the most ambitious plans of a similar scale, not only in the Czech Republic. The developer operates in another 6 countries in the region of Central and Eastern Europe and is also one of the five largest industrial builders in Europe. On the way to its commitment, so-called carbon offsetting, in the form of forest management and planting, is only one part of the CTP’s overall environmental approach.
Martin Vaidiš, who is in charge of sustainable design at CTP, said earlier: “As a market leader, the CTP Group was green even before the environmental approach became the number one public issue. Today, thanks to this, we can calculate the built-in energy of our buildings very precisely. So, we know how much carbon we have to save or absorb by planting greenery or building renewable energy sources.”
“Most lay people today imagine a sustainable building as a building covered with greenery, but for real assessment we have to go deeper into numbers and used technologies, certificates of materials on environmental impact, etc. In industrial real estate we often talk about the use of green roofs, while we already know that an intensive green roof on the roof of an industrial park or logistics hall brings a significant increase in carbon footprint of the building due to the necessary reinforcement,” he continues. “If there is a trend in the construction of industrial real estate that is worth following, it is certainly the use of alternative materials such as wooden elements in the construction of halls, use of recycled materials instead of aggregates for concrete elements and looking for a pragmatic scale in their application, instead of one-sided enforcement," Vaidiš concludes.
In addition to carbon offsets of its own operations, CTP is also working intensively to reduce its carbon footprint by maintaining and improving its existing properties. In addition to replacing lighting and heating sources, the company also focuses on reducing waste production, water management, more accurate consumption measurement and optimization, and is planning to install photovoltaic power plants on the roofs of their projects with performance of 15 megawatt-peak up to 250 MWp.
An integral part of the path to carbon neutrality is verification of sustainability of the new and existing CTP buildings. Therefore, the company started the project of certification of its existing portfolio.
All new CTP buildings are designed to achieve the highest level of environmental certification. Today, not only the energy performance of a building is being monitored, but a wide range of sustainability indicators, including water management or wellbeing of building users. All CTP Group properties that were not certified during construction will receive a BREEAM In-use certificate this year, at least in the Very Good rating.
On October 1, 2020, CTP successfully issued its debut green bonds worth 650 million euros. The initial issue of CTP green bonds became the largest initial issue of a development company in the CEE region, and the bonds were very well received by investors. Among the buyers was the European Central Bank. Demand for bonds has exceeded supply many times over, reaching more than 2 billion euros. Such a financial market signal appreciated CTP's commitment to sustainability.