Visual Lease Adds ESG Tracking for Owned and Leased Asset Portfolios

Visual Lease, a vendor of lease optimization software, announced VL ESG Steward, “a solution designed to track and report on the environmental impact of an organization’s owned and leased asset portfolio,” according to a company release.

According to the company, the tool allows businesses to consolidate data from different types of leases, including commercial real estate, fleet, and equipment, to track results for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and reporting.

Increasingly, the CRE industry and companies owning or leasing CRE-type properties are under pressure from investors and governments to monitor and improve environmental performance and to document the potential impact properties face. CRE owners and operators have challenges both in having commonly accepted approaches to measurement and reporting, and also in trying the information to properties for aggregated reporting.

“Much like the lease accounting process, the data points required to track environmental impact are dynamic and complex,” the company says. “To streamline the process, VL ESG Steward converts consumption data of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, PFCs, CH4, SF6, N2O, HFCs) using calculations based on the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Protocol and EPA Energy grid emissions factors. The result is an up-to-date and ongoing greenhouse gas inventory as it relates to leased, owned and other intangible assets across an organization’s portfolio.”

In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, the software is capable of tracking energy and water use, waste management, and more. “It collects data from a range of sources and automatically converts it into the standardized measurement of choice,” the company says.

“We’re seeing ESG reporting become an increasingly crucial part of asset management for our clients,” the release quoted CEO Robert Michlewicz. “In fact, our recent research revealed that 99% of senior real estate executives at companies with more than 1,000 employees believe it is important to reduce the carbon footprint of their future leases.” Visual Lease says that up to this point there hasn’t been a tool that would manage “accurate tracking and management of this critical data.”

While called VL ESG Steward, it is important to note that the company addresses only the environmental aspect, not the social or governance parts.