Why Rules Exist
This term describes a cost or benefit that falls on a third party who wasn't part of the original decision.
What is an externality?
This is what the acronym GRI stands for.
What is Global Reporting Initiative?
These are the three areas CDP rates companies on, A through D-.
What are climate change, water security, and deforestation?
This is the category "board diversity" falls under.
What is Governance?
This is the main problem caused by a company reporting only its best-looking metric and hiding the rest.
What is breaking comparability between companies (selective disclosure/greenwashing)?
This is the main reason consumer demand alone can't drive widespread sustainable change, according to the video.
What is the fact that sustainable products often cost more, excluding lower-income buyers?
This is the key difference in focus between SASB and GRI.
What is SASB being industry-specific and financially material, while GRI is broader and stakeholder-inclusive?
This standard is built specifically to assess climate-related financial risk.
What is TCFD?
This is a universal Environmental metric named in the proposed reporting framework.
What is greenhouse gas emissions (or energy consumption/water usage/waste management)?
This is the reason the video gives for real estate lagging behind other sectors in standardized sustainability reporting.
What is real estate being lower priority in the GRI Sector Program pilot?
Arrange this cause-and-effect chain in the correct logical order: government sets minimum standards / a company's action creates a cost a third party pays / large companies avoid accountability due to unequal power / consumers can't force change alone because sustainable options cost more / businesses chase short-term profit over long-term risk.
What is: externality occurs -> consumers can't fix it alone -> businesses chase short-term profit -> inequality compounds -> government intervenes?
Arrange these standards in order of when they were founded, earliest to latest: TCFD, GRI, CSRD, SASB, CDP.
What is GRI (1997) -> CDP (2000) -> SASB (2011) -> TCFD (2015) -> CSRD (2022)?
Arrange these from least formal/binding to most formal/binding: CSRD, GRI, SBTi, UNPRI.
What is GRI -> UNPRI -> SBTi -> CSRD?
Arrange these categories in order from most immediate/day-to-day at the building level to most long-term/company-wide: Resilience, Environmental, Governance, Social.
What is Environmental -> Social -> Governance -> Resilience?
Arrange these steps to build a sustainability report from scratch in a logical order: report the metrics / decide if reporting should be mandatory or voluntary / pick a standard to follow / identify what actually needs measuring.
What is decide mandatory vs. voluntary -> pick a standard -> identify what to measure -> report the metrics?
This is the term for a REIT prioritizing this quarter's earnings over a 10-year floodproofing payoff
What is short-term vs. long-term thinking?
This is the key difference between CSRD and GRI in terms of whether companies are legally required to comply.
What is CSRD being mandatory for large EU companies, while GRI is voluntary?
This is what GRESB benchmarks, specifically.
What is real estate and infrastructure ESG performance?
This is the reason the video gives for tracking water usage at both the corporate and portfolio level.
What is making conservation efforts measurable and comparable across the whole company?
This is an example of an energy source that is both financially material and impact material at the same time.
What is renewable energy investment (lowers cost and emissions together)?
These are the two categories of tools the video says governments use to correct market failures.
What are taxes/regulations and incentives/subsidies?
This is what happened to SASB in 2021, and where its standards live today.
What is merging with IIRC to form the Value Reporting Foundation, later folded into ISSB?
This is the key difference between Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions under the GHG Protocol.
What is Scope 2 being indirect emissions from purchased energy, while Scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions like supply chain?
This is the difference between a universal metric and a sector-specific metric in the proposed framework.
What is universal applying across all real estate types, while sector-specific captures unique risks in one sector like office vs. multifamily?
This is a set of three tools or metrics that could each satisfy investors, tenants, and regulators at once.
What is TCFD for investors, tenant satisfaction score for tenants, and energy disclosure compliance for regulators?