What European property investors could learn from the French system

European property investors could learn a trick or two from the French, when it comes to gathering energy use data, write Vicky Cotton (head of ESG at Workman) and Najib Ghantous (a director at Workman's French subsidiary, Workman Turnbull).

Amidst ongoing geopolitical and economic upheaval, the focus of landlords and international funds is now directed more towards energy efficiency than ever before.

While the process of tracking energy consumption was previously a basic administrative procedure, involving little more than the recording of numbers in a spreadsheet, there is an increasing priority to interrogate those numbers in order to reduce the running costs of real assets.

In some parts of the European commercial property market, however, such as the United Kingdom, investors can face significant ESG data gaps in key areas such as energy consumption, water, and waste data, as much of this information will be held by occupiers.

While landlords will ha