Why Schroders Included the EIS Score in Its Latest Ranking

This year, Schroders included an environmental impact score on its latest Global Cities Index, which ranks the top investment cities globally. While the inclusion of the environmental score didn’t affect the rankings this year—Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong took the top three spots, as they did last yea—the environment did have an impact on each city’s score and shows the important role that an EIS score will have on investment activity.

A city that is environmentally sustainable will be economically sustainable and therefore a good place for capital investment,” Hugo Machin, co-head of the global cities at Schroders, tells GlobeSt.com. “Cities will have to respond to climate change. They cannot change where they are located, but they can change how they respond. Policy response will become increasingly important and this will be captured in the index.”

Investors are following suit. Environmental scores are becoming a key factor in deciding geographic targets. “The EIS score is now integrated into the Cities index. The index is a measure of where to allocate capital. If cities don’t respond to climate change then their long-term attractiveness wanes,” says Machin.