Property company M&G Real Estate is named CIBSE carbon champion
M&G Real Estate was named ‘Carbon champion’ at this year’s CIBSE Building Performance Awards. The award was in recognition of the company’s long-term commitment to improving building performance driven by investment strategy. M&G also won the ‘Energy management award’ for its industry-leading long-term performance programme of improvements to the energy performance of its shopping-centre portfolio.
The energy-efficiency strategy has reduced the energy consumption of all eight M&G shopping centres by 23% over three years — amounting to over 21 GWh and £985 000.
The judges were especially impressed by M&G Real Estate showing the way in a competitive market and its effective collaboration with different shareholders.
Mitch Layng, portfolio energy manager, said, ‘Winning this award was beyond our dreams. Through collaboration and partnerships, we have been able to develop energy assessment and reporting methodology for industry-wide use. Training and education is of vital importance when trying to reduce energy consumption, and we made sure we engaged all building users and occupiers to help us achieve our goal.
Approaches included small adjustments of monitoring and measuring systems, refurbishments with short payback periods and changes requiring greater investment — such as improving chillers.
Picture shows Mitch Layng with M&G Real estate and Nina Reid, director — responsible property investment (the two in the centre) pictured with the event’s host Stephanie McGovern, business presenter for BBC Breakfast, and James Porter, national sales manager with award sponsor Remeha Commercial.
M&G also created environmental guides for occupiers that detailed the financial and environment benefits of fit-out, refurbishment, energy efficiency in equipment and appliances, and the importance of monitoring consumption.
Through collaboration with the British Property Trust, M&G Real Estate created an industry-wide standard for green-lease clauses to be incorporated into their retail leases. Collaboration with CO2 Estates led to the development of and energy-assessment and reporting methodology for industry-wide use.
