CREFC Publishes Updated Sustainability Strategic Issues Monitor
July 29, 2025
The CRE Finance Council announced the fourth update of its Sustainability Trends in the Commercial Real Estate Finance Industry: Update Report, July 2025, which outlines sustainability-related risks and opportunities for the commercial real estate (CRE) sector.
- Resiliency and efficiency standards, including the implications for insurance pricing, clean energy incentives, and decarbonization;
- Regulation, policy, and political dynamics, with an accompanying outlook on deregulatory trends, legal challenges, and nation-wide policy fragmentation; and
- Emerging trends such as data center energy use and resiliency, nuclear power, and biodiversity investments.
What they're saying: CREFC's Property Risk & Resilience Committee, launched in 2021 as the Sustainability Initiative, recognized the need for a reliable monitoring system to help industry partners navigate the complicated U.S. sustainability landscape.
To address this need, CREFC collaborated with Oxford Analytica to develop the Strategic Issues Monitor (SIM). The SIM is a benchmark tool designed to identify, evaluate, and track macro sustainability trends that will most significantly impact the U.S. CRE finance industry over the next three years.
- Given growing resiliency and energy needs, this monitoring system identifies both risks and opportunities for the CRE industry.
What's next: CREFC’s Property Risk & Resilience Committee will continue to identify and evaluate CRE risks and opportunities as the U.S. sustainability landscape evolves, including changes in regulation, policy, and technology.
Please contact Sairah Burki (sburki@crefc.org) with any comments.