The challenge
A UK-based regional property fund with £800M AUM and 34 assets under management had made a public net-zero commitment to their investors. Their first GRESB submission was due in nine months.
The problem: their energy data was a mess. Consumption data for each asset lived with the managing agent. Formats were inconsistent. Some assets had only annual reads. Several had no data at all for certain periods. The sustainability manager estimated it would take six weeks to gather, clean, and collate the data needed for submission — assuming everything went smoothly.
It didn't. The previous year's GRESB submission had taken three months and still contained data gaps they couldn't explain.
What they did
The fund deployed Etainabl across all 34 assets, working with five different managing agents. The rollout took two weeks:
- Week 1: Asset register built in Etainabl, metering configurations confirmed for each site
- Week 2: AMR connections established for HH-metered sites; historical data imported from supplier invoices and agent spreadsheets going back three years
- Ongoing: Automatic monthly data collection from all meters; live dashboards for the sustainability team
Where historical data had gaps, Etainabl applied industry-standard estimation methodology with clear data quality flags, ensuring the submission was GRESB-compliant even where actual reads weren't available.
The results
Data preparation: What had taken six weeks dropped to five days. The sustainability manager could run the GRESB data extract directly from Etainabl rather than manually consolidating from multiple sources.
Data coverage: Coverage increased from 71% (previous submission) to 94% of floor area with actual or estimated meter data.
GRESB score: The fund's GRESB score improved by 11 points, driven primarily by improved data coverage and the addition of half-hourly consumption data for the majority of assets.
Billing errors identified: In the first three months, automated bill validation identified £43,000 in billing errors across the portfolio — offsetting more than half the annual Etainabl licence cost.
Investor confidence: The fund's annual LP report included, for the first time, asset-level emissions data and a credible net-zero pathway. The feedback from investors was positive.
What they said
"We made a net-zero commitment without really knowing whether we had the data infrastructure to back it up. Etainabl gave us that infrastructure. The GRESB submission that used to keep us up at night now takes five days and I'm confident in every number."
— Sustainability Manager, Regional Property Fund