USGBC Unveils PERFORM: A Game-Changer for Real Estate Sustainability Across Portfolios

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced the release of PERFORM, a new offering that empowers organizations to transform real estate portfolios into sustainability success stories. PERFORM provides guidance, tools, and third-party verification from GBCI, helping organizations meet sustainability goals and reporting requirements while improving portfolio-wide performance.

“PERFORM helps organizations advance sustainability across their real estate portfolios, ensuring every building—regardless of type or starting point—contributes to achieving organizational performance goals,” said Peter Templeton, president & CEO, USGBC and GBCI (Green Business Certification, Inc.). “USGBC and the green building community are committed to wholesale market transformation, which means accelerating and scaling measurable performance improvement across the built environment. PERFORM will enable organizations to meet sustainability and regulatory goals while addressing the urgent needs to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen resilience, protect human and ecosystem health, and advance equity across all communities.” 

PERFORM is designed to track and improve sustainability performance of diverse building portfolios, enabling incremental improvements across all owned, occupied or managed assets. Through PERFORM, organizations set their own goals, implement plans and strategies, measure improvement, and communicate improvements to stakeholders. It includes a suite of complementary tools, including:

• Standardized portfolio-wide guidance and assessment to help organizations develop actionable plans, goals, and strategies.
• Measurement and verification of portfolio-wide performance improvement relative to organizational commitments, including emissions, energy, waste, water, and more.
• Technical support for existing building portfolios at various levels of performance aligned with their unique organizational goals, strategies, and circumstances.

PERFORM empowers organizations to bridge the gap between their sustainability targets and actionable, measurable outcomes, particularly in a global context where many companies are looking for tangible ways to demonstrate real progress toward their emissions reductions and sustainability goals.

Recent research by the Financial Times with Smurfit Kappa found that while many organizations set ambitious sustainability targets, they lack robust and actionable plans to achieve those goals. Additionally, a report by New Climate Institute found that many organizations with corporate net zero commitments have not meaningfully improved the quality or credibility of their net zero strategies. PERFORM aims to bridge that gap.

PERFORM complements USGBC’s globally recognized LEED green building system, which certifies buildings and projects to a defined, consensus-based, leadership standard. PERFORM works with entire real estate portfolios to help set customized goals, implement plans, measure improvement over time, and verify achievements. In addition to verifying the achievement of energy and climate-related sustainability goals, the PERFORM program can be used to verify progress and achievements across a holistic set of environmental, social, and resilience metrics. 

“Organizations that have set portfolio-level sustainability goals to satisfy stakeholders, meet public commitments, and comply with evolving regulatory standards are now looking for pathways to make meaningful and verifiable progress,” said Sarah Zaleski, chief products officer, USGBC and GBCI. “PERFORM builds on USGBC’s decades of expertise as a market accelerator to partner with organizations around the world to achieve their portfolio goals.”

In 2023, USGBC and GBCI launched a Portfolio Accelerator program to test and refine the program to meet evolving market needs. With the input of global portfolio owners, USGBC has established a comprehensive assessment process, including an evaluation of progress against performance commitments, and verification of portfolio-level progress and performance.

Andy Zou, participant in the Portfolio Accelerator program, Grubb Properties: “We're incredibly excited to be involved. It fits into well in terms of our larger sustainability strategy. Getting recognition from the U.S. Green Building Council is a huge win for us. It really sets us up well for success in terms of our sustainability recognition in other spaces.”

Mario Berlanga, CEO of Proximity Parks and another program participant, said, “We are grateful for the opportunity. This program has provided us with a lot of learning and has enabled us to fine-tune, reaffirm, and scale our commitment to sustainability.”

“As part of PERFORM, we are expanding our partnerships with Schneider Electric, ClimateFirst, Carbonsight, and Kode Labs to collaborate on data exchange, streamline portfolio-level data and introduce new portfolio-level tools that drive improvement,” added Zaleski. 

In addition, USGBC and GBCI will strengthen partnerships with Measurabl to enhance data sharing for verification of portfolio-level sustainability metrics and with GRESB, Nareit, and ISSP to support organizations in the early stages of their sustainability journey, focusing on guidance and education.

PERFORM, officially known as Arc PERFORM, can be accessed on Arc, a new digital platform and workspace that brings together all of USGBC and GBCI’s products under one seamless, easy-to-use, and intuitive user experience. From the Arc dashboard, organizations can select PERFORM, which provides access to a custom target-setting tool where users can indicate the metrics to be tracked, set targets from their sustainability action plans and existing tracking systems, and submit to GBCI for verification of performance claims, for an additional cost.

To learn more about the USGBC PERFORM program.