Metrovacesa registers almost fifty buildings throughout Spain to certify their sustainability with VERDE

• The company, Spain’s leading real estate developer, is moving forward with the Green Building Council España (GBCe), Spain’s leading sustainable building organisation and developer of VERDE, in the implementation of sustainability in its construction projects.

• This collaboration shows Metrovacesa’s commitment to progress, learning and constant improvement,” says Bruno Sauer, co-director general of GBCe.

24 April 2023. Metrovacesa, Spain’s leading real estate developer, has registered nearly fifty buildings throughout Spain for evaluation and subsequent certification with the VERDE sustainability tool. Metrovacesa is thus making progress together with the Green Building Council España (GBCe) – the leading sustainable building organisation in Spain and developer of VERDE – in the implementation of sustainability in its construction projects.

This agreement, which is part of the agreement signed between the two organisations in December 2021, seeks to strike a balance between the company’s environmental, social and ESG objectives. “This collaboration shows Metrovacesa’s commitment to progress, learning and constant improvement,” says Bruno Sauer, co-CEO of GBCe.

To achieve this objective, specialists have been integrated into the various work teams that will enable the necessary actions to be implemented for the growth of each project. These actions include raising the awareness of the company’s managers and the training of site technicians and other Metrovacesa collaborators in VERDE – and in other specific areas.

GBCe is also supporting Metrovacesa in the implementation of a specific protocol to promote sustainability. This strategy is based on the key aspects required for VERDE certification, which are to organise the information – generating a repository of project documentation, such as the Building Book, site documentation, etc.; to measure, once the data is organised, to see how the buildings are performing; to talk, involving the rest of the agents in the chain so that they are informed of the objectives and to improve, taking as a reference criteria such as those required by VERDE, DGNB or the taxonomy of sustainable finances.

Previous experience

“Metrovacesa is on the right path towards sustainability and is doing so at a very good pace, because they have taken it as a challenge”, says Yolanda del Rey, head of certification at GBCe. This was evident at the Sustainability Fair 2023 in Granada, organised by the Granada Chamber of Commerce on 30 and 31 March, where GBCe and Metrovacesa discussed the company’s entry into this journey: “Metrovacesa has already done much of its homework, which allows them to make the improvements more effective and the results faster,” says Del Rey.

In this sense, the collaboration between Metrovacesa and GBCe is based on previous experience in sustainability, which serves as a starting point for the continuous improvement of the quality of the company’s assets, to anticipate European policies – such as the Level(s) framework, promoted by the European Commission to achieve sustainable buildings, or the taxonomy of sustainable finance, an instrument that allows financial agents and companies to define which activities are considered as such – and to establish a working protocol in terms of design, construction, management and delivery.

Thus, Metrovacesa has generalised the use of devices to reduce water consumption in all its homes, the optimisation of natural lighting and the improvement of acoustic insulation and air quality. It has also focused on improving communal areas, so that they can be used by all types of people. In terms of environmental impact, Metrovacesa is analysing the carbon footprint of its buildings along with other indicators. In this sense, they are also working to protect the biodiversity of the buildings, a challenge that is as important for society as climate change.

In this way, Metrovacesa is working to improve the quality of its buildings, the services they offer to people and, therefore, to increase the value of the properties, reducing the risks of future investments. “We are grateful for the commitment of such important developers as Metrovacesa to sustainability understood in a global, comprehensive way, which serves as an example for other developers,” says Paula Rivas, technical director of GBCe.

David Sierra, Director of Projects and Sustainability at Metrovacesa, said: “We are very excited to see how little by little we are making progress on the proposed objectives and how this agreement with GBCe helps us to promote the path towards sustainability throughout our value chain. This agreement is a way of guaranteeing, on the one hand, values in terms of environmental sustainability, quality of life, health, reduction of the carbon footprint, improvement in waste management that will benefit homeowners and, of course, the planet”.