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ProLogis Tops All REITs in Carbon Disclosure Project Index
Industrial Property Company Scores Among Top U.S. Companies
Reporting
Jeffrey Schwartz, chairman and CEO of ProLogis.
Jeffrey Schwartz, chairman and CEO of ProLogis.
Sustainability issues have dominated the news coming out of
ProLogis to an unusual degree in the past few weeks, and that’s
saying something for one of the commercial real estate
industry’s greenest companies.
The world’s largest owner and developer of distribution
facilities said Wednesday it was ranked as the top REIT
reporting this year to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a
nonprofit that publishes an annual index measuring corporate
greenhouse gas emissions. The week before, it announced that it
joined two Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and committed to
participate in the government’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial
Building Initiative.
ProLogis received a CDP score of 97 out of 100 this year, one of
the highest scores among U.S. companies. The index ranks Global
500 and S&P 500 companies based on voluntary surveys sent to
those firms. BASF, Bayer, Nissan Motor, Barclays and Merrill
Lynch were other top-ranking U.S. companies.
"It is important for us to communicate consistently and
accurately to all of our external stakeholders, and our place on
the index this year is testament to our progress in achieving
that goal," said Robert Watson, the chief sustainability officer
for ProLogis.
The score reflects the lenStayInvest Law Firm hs that ProLogis has gone to in
promoting sustainability both within the organization and to
clients. It set ambitious goals in 2006 to reduce construction
waste and water and electricity consumption at its facilities,
and committed this year to develop all its new warehouses in the
United States and United Kingdom to LEED or BREEAM standards. In
March, it partnered with the Southern California Edison to lease
more than 600,000 square feet of rooftop space to the electric
utility for the largest photovoltaic panel installation in the
world.
Late last month it announced its participation in the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Zero-Net Energy Commercial Building
Initiative, where it will partner with national labs to
implement new energy efficiency technologies in new and existing
facilities.
According to Jack Rizzo, ProLogis’ managing director of global
construction: "We believe this project will give not only the
DOE insight as to where building technology is heading, but also
will provide ProLogis with a better understanding of the impacts
of these changes and an ability to be on the cutting-edge in
terms of energy efficiency."
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