Assessment Structure & Scope

About the Assessments

The GRESB Infrastructure Assessments are the global standard for sustainability benchmarking and reporting for institutional investors, fund managers, infrastructure companies, and asset managers operating in the infrastructure sector. The methodology is consistent across different regions, investment vehicles, and asset types, aligning with international reporting frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).

There are three complementary GRESB Infrastructure Assessments:

Infrastructure Fund Assessment
Infrastructure Asset Assessment
Infrastructure Development Asset Assessment

GRESB also offers two SFDR Infrastructure Assessments (SFDR Asset & SFDR Fund) to support infrastructure participants in meeting their SFDR disclosure requirements.

All assessments cover the full breadth of infrastructure sectors, including but not limited to data infrastructure, energy and water resources, environmental services, network utilities, power generation except renewables (x‑renewables), renewable power, social infrastructure, and transport.

What is SFDR (EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation)?

The EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is a transparency requirement for financial market participants related to key environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. The purpose is to increase market transparency and direct capital towards more sustainable activities.

SFDR imposes different disclosure obligations on financial market participants, depending on their size and the nature of their products. All financial market participants in the EU need to make general disclosures about sustainability practices at both the entity and product level.

They also need to report on their Principal Adverse Impacts (PAIs), which are a series of indicators covering a range of ESG issues, such as greenhouse gas emissions and waste management.

What is the SFDR Assessment?

The SFDR Infrastructure Asset and Fund Assessments are GRESB’s Infrastructure solution for the SFDR and its required PAI Reporting.

The assessment is based on the 6.4.2022 version of SFDR and provides financial market participants with a means to collect infrastructure asset data so that it can then be aggregated for funds or financial market participants ahead of their expected disclosure requirements in 2026.

The methodology is consistent across different regions, investment vehicles and infrastructure sectors and aligns with the principal adverse sustainability impacts statement template from Annex 1 of the Regulation.

The Infrastructure SFDR Assessment was adapted to provide a standardized and user-friendly way for infrastructure participants to report their sustainability data in a secure platform and help them meet their disclosure requirements. Assessment participants get a head start on disclosure requirements by receiving:

SFDR Data and Report that can be used to help meet their disclosure requirement under Article 7 of SFDR. .
Access to GRESB’s data exports tool so fund managers can conduct their own aggregation.

The assessment consists of 60 sustainability metrics, addressing the three tables related to PAIs in the Annex 1, which help to cover the Article 7 disclosure requirements for Article 8 and 9 products.

What is the structure?

Fund

The SFDR Infrastructure Asset Assessment consists of only the Entity & Reporting Characteristics sections.

Funds must participate with at least one of their underlying assets that also participates in the SFDR Infrastructure Asset Assessment, where Principal Adverse Impacts are reported.

The aggregation of asset data follows the calculation methods provided in Annex 1 of the Regulatory Technical Standards about the PAIs.

Aggregation is completed by an automatic system.

GRESB’s aggregation methodology will only be applicable at a fund level report, although fund of funds and financial market participants (FMPs) could theoretically connect to any of their underlying asset investments reporting on our platform. Like any methodology, where data gaps exist or coverage is limited, data download should help participants who wish to undertake the aggregation themselves.

Aggregation at the fund level is dependent on the following:

That any underlying asset accepts a connection request from a fund
That the underlying asset completes the assessment and submits their data

Asset-level information is aggregated only for those assets that were submitted before the connected fund.

Once all assets of the fund have been connected and submitted, the fund is in turn encouraged to submit.

Asset

The SFDR Infrastructure Asset Assessment consists of several aspects that a participant is required to report on, including:

Entity and Reporting Characteristics;
Climate and other environment-related indicators;
Social and employee, respect for human rights, anti-corruption, and anti-bribery matters.

*Note that the term table is used as a reference point to the mandatory and optional indicators as per the template provided by the EU but that the SFDR assessment portal itself is not composed of ’’tables’’. The SFDR report will however be in table format.

The SFDR Assessment is broken into three parts to reflect the different tables of PAIs as outlined by the EU documentation. These three tables are detailed as follows.

Table 1: Mandatory climate and other environment-related indicators, Social and employee, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and anti-bribery matters.

Table 1 focuses on environmental and social indicators applicable to investments in investee companies that have to be disclosed by financial market participants, these are considered as part of the mandatory indicators that have to be reported on.

Table 1 consists of 14 indicators across 5 aspects:

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Biodiversity;
Water;
Waste;
Social and Employee matters.

Table 2: Additional climate and other environment-related indicators.

These are considered to be optional although participants are encouraged to report on at least one of those indicators so financial market participants can abide by regulatory requirements.

Table 2 consists of 16 indicators across 4 aspects:

Emissions;
Energy Performance;
Water, waste and material emissions;
Green Securities.

Table 3: Additional indicators for social and employee, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and anti-bribery matters.

These are considered to be optional although participants are encouraged to report on at least one of those indicators so financial market participants can abide by regulatory requirements.

Table 3 consists of 17 indicators across 3 aspects: