Aldar Sustainability Report 2021-lays foundations for 2022 Net Zero Action Plan.

They also launched a new data management system to streamline reporting across the group and track more than 500 non-financial KPIs across the ESG spectrum, paving the way for more detailed and stronger reporting of sustainability metrics. The system aligns with international sustainability reporting frameworks including major sustainability indices, GRESB, and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). They hope to expand it to incorporate other ESG frameworks and ratings such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in the near future.

Talal Al Dhiyebi, Chief Executive Officer, Aldar, said: “The steps we have taken in 2021 to prioritize the environment and impose on ourselves greater accountability and transparency are fully aligned with UAE’s robust sustainability agenda and global international ESG standards. As we continue to support the UAE leadership’s vision and decarbonize our building operations, we are also redefining Middle East real-estate sustainability benchmarks and putting ourselves on track to become industry leaders.”

Greg Fewer, Group Chief Financial and Sustainability Officer at Aldar, added: “As with any long-term commitment, there is a need for regular review and enhancement. In 2021, our goal was to accelerate our sustainability capabilities and put in place the infrastructure to accurately measure the progress of our ambitious targets. We achieved this by enhancing data collection, increasing our levels of governance, and expanding our sustainability teams. We are now in a position to expedite our agenda and report the areas of progress most important to our stakeholders more robustly.”

The enhanced methodologies have supported Aldar to improve the quality of measurements in its carbon footprint, setting the environmental baseline for the Group’s decarbonization journey. The company’s partial carbon footprint in 2021, including Scope 1, 2, and Scope 3, was 1,932,952 tCO2e, with some 73.7% of Aldar’s total Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions coming from electricity and 23.3% from cooling. The company’s Scope 3 emissions at the Group level represent around 87.3% of its carbon footprint.

In 2021, Aldar also took significant measures to reduce energy consumption across its portfolio by 20%. The Group’s ambitious retrofit project is the largest of its kind in the UAE and is expected to remove 80,000 tons of carbon emissions annually across the company’s 80 hotel, school, commercial, leisure, and residential assets. The wide-ranging retrofit project will save Aldar AED 40 million per year in energy consumption costs. The company in 2021 also built its first solar hybrid power plant at one of its construction sites and signed a clean energy agreement with Emirates Water and Electricity to provide clean energy sources for up to five years.