Special Topic: 2025 Global Headquarters Economy Conference and China Building Economy Beijing Forum

On September 11, the 2025 Global Headquarters Economy Conference and China Building Economy Beijing Forum was held in Beijing. The event was hosted by the World Trade Points Alliance and China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Development, organized by the Building Economy and Headquarters Economy Branch of China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Development and Cluster Think Tank. The conference invited renowned headquarters enterprises and asset management institutions to focus on opportunities and challenges in headquarters economy and building economy development from a global perspective, exploring pathways and models for "breakthrough and evolution," and building an industrial community of "city-headquarters-building" while establishing a high-end dialogue and cooperation platform for headquarters economy and building economy. Shuang Yan, North Region Sustainability Director of KERRY PPT, was invited to participate as a panelist in the roundtable discussion on "ESG Empowering Real Industry and Real Estate Value Creation."

The dialogue transcript is as follows:

Whether it's KERRY PPT or other real estate companies, ultimately we're all asset managers. Beyond development, we must consider co-construction with tenants, which involves stakeholder interests, as well as alignment with government regulations and policies. From my personal practical experience, the most challenging aspects are two points: first, we need to align goals with all stakeholders, because sometimes the owner's original intentions or directly applying ESG topics - whether E or S issues - may not actually meet the needs of tenants or ecosystem partners. Therefore, what we need to do is first align standards, and second, quantify these standards. For example, in environmental aspects, having worked in real estate development for over ten years, I consider myself experienced in green buildings, but are the E-related standards what other tenants need? This is actually what Beijing Kerry Center is currently doing - besides building ecological value chains within buildings, we're also creating an ESG Total Solution to complete the first step of alignment, then quantification, providing all our sustainable development services to co-build building economy with tenants and government.

As everyone knows, domestic ESG implementation truly began only in the past seven or eight years. In the previous decade-plus of real estate development and construction, we were more focused on obtaining international green certifications and ESG ratings by implementing mandatory hardware elements, such as US LEED certification, WELL certification, and the GRESB global real estate rating standard mentioned earlier by Director Deng Yaohua. To ordinary outsiders, real estate companies pursuing these certifications might seem like simply paying consultant fees, then certification fees to international institutions, and finally receiving a plaque, possibly with some policy reward funding. But what's the logic behind this? Because most Fortune 500 companies and multinational enterprise tenants specifically require projects to have green international certifications and sustainable development highlights when selecting locations. As practitioners, we can think inversely: why do tenants value these sustainable development credentials? It's because corporate ESG not only reduces costs and increases efficiency, but also helps them resist risks and enhance asset resilience during economic cycles. This actually presents us with an opportunity - through numerous real estate projects, we discover that ESG is not simply a cost item during implementation, but brings tangible value enhancement to enterprises.

I'd like to share a case from a past project I managed - the Z6 project in Beijing CBD core area, which received the Net Zero Carbon Excellence certification jointly issued by BRE and TUV in April last year, arguably China's first super high-rise building to achieve the highest level of net zero carbon certification. When undertaking this project, our objective wasn't simply to obtain green certification like LEED and WELL, but because the company I was with had reached a carbon reduction critical point. It was among the first mainland real estate companies listed in Hong Kong to join SBTi and propose "2050 Net Zero Emissions." During healthier periods for the real estate industry, we could achieve sufficient project volume meeting green building standards annually, enabling us to pursue ratings, certifications, and green-linked bonds. However, with policy adjustments, this vision faced challenges, so we increasingly confronted cost savings and carbon target achievement issues.

When working on this project, I had limited opportunities. First, I couldn't incur any additional incremental costs, so I focused carbon reduction efforts on operational carbon. Since the Z6 project was nearing design completion, and everyone knows that embodied carbon in buildings only becomes locked after actual construction completion, we still had opportunities before completion. We mobilized the entire group's resources and conducted extensive research with friends and institutions present today, examining what we could achieve in embodied carbon and net zero emissions. The goal was not only to complete the group's carbon targets, but more importantly, to establish a reference system through this project. Beyond core area "standard" certifications like LEED and WELL Platinum, CBD Z6 project's real value lies in projected operational carbon emissions during design phase being 47% lower than national standards, and establishing a carbon management system covering design, procurement, and construction during the construction process to strictly control embodied carbon and build enterprise-level carbon databases and green supply chain platforms, thereby achieving whole lifecycle building net zero goals. Precisely because of Z6 project's pioneering exploration in net zero, the group's 2024 GRESB rating returned to 5-star status.