IMPROVING OUR ENVIRONMENT

As a leading property company in Australia, building and operating our portfolio of centres in a way that generates positive environmental outcomes is engrained in the way we do business and is paramount to creating market leading destinations. 

We recognise the role we play in ensuring the smart operation of our assets to limit unnecessary resource use and providing community hubs that are resilient to the effects of climate change. 

Vicinity’s Sustainability strategy addresses both the cause and the impact of climate change through it’s ‘Low Carbon Smart Assets’ and ‘Climate Resilience’ pillars. In FY21 we continued to work towards our long-term target of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030 for our wholly owned retail assets to significantly reduce our carbon emissions, to be achieved through a combination of energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy installations such as solar.  We are also building our portfolio’s adaptive capacity and resilience to climate-related impacts.

We integrate innovative and industry best practice sustainability solutions to our development projects, shopping centre operations and our investment planning to ensure positive environmental outcomes are business as usual and position our centres locally as strong resilient community hubs. Doing so successfully requires us to take a long-term view, which drives value now and well into the future.

Vicinity recognises that climate change presents direct and indirect risks for our business both now and over the long-term.

We understand the important part we play in creating resilient centres and supporting our retailers and communities during climate events. We also acknowledge our role in limiting our contribution to climate change through minimising carbon emissions associated with our business activities.

Vicinity's approach to managing climate change risk is informed by the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and in FY21 we became a formal supporter of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). The following information is a high-level summary of Vicinity’s approach to managing climate change risk. For Vicinity’s full disclosure in accordance with the TCFD framework, refer to our CDP Report.

Vicinity has set a public target to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030 for our wholly owned retail assets.

We recognise the role we play in facilitating a low carbon economy and ensuring the smart operation of our assets to limit unnecessary resource use.  Our strategy is focused on significantly reducing the long-term carbon footprint of our asset portfolio by implementing innovative technologies that improve energy efficiency, increase our uptake of onsite renewable energy such as solar, and automating superior asset performance.

Our efforts in this space make good business sense for a number of reasons.  They deliver operational benefits to Vicinity such as more efficient and lower cost assets, and generate a number of positive impacts for our communities and the environment, as well as flow on benefits to our consumers and retailers.

In July 2019 Vicinity announced a long-term target of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2030 for our wholly owned retail assets, to be delivered via a scaled up energy efficiency and on site solar roll out program, and aligning our carbon reduction efforts with the Paris Agreement.

Vicinity has committed $73M to Australia’s largest shopping centre solar roll out, reducing our exposure to volatile energy markets and delivering strong investment returns while helping us to achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions across our portfolio.