Pramerica Real Estate Investors Sustainability Report 2010

“Globally, buildings contribute 30% of the CO2 (emissions), 8.6 billion tons (annually). The potential for low-cost reductions is higher (with buildings) than transportation, forestry or industry. We have the technology. The climate change battle will be won or lost with buildings.” - Niclas Svenningsen, UN Environmental Programme, Sustainable Buildings Initiative

Executive Summary

Pramerica Real Estate Investors (“Pramerica”) operates in a world in which sustainability and environmental awareness increasingly play an important role in real estate around the globe. Industry leaders are finding that integrating sustainability into their business is far from being a burden, rather it helps to develop operational efficiencies, improve the environmental quality of assets and add value to the bottom line. Not only do sustainability initiatives benefit the environment, but they strengthen and align business interests, identify new opportunities and provide a different lens through which to view and mitigate risk. In short, all stakeholders benefit.

Pramerica began diligently advancing five sustainability initiatives in 2010. We started to empower our regional offices by providing a flexible framework to make decisions that work with and respect the context of each local market, regulatory regime and culture. As we provide scale to these efforts, we created tools for asset and property managers to improve environmental performance, which serve to streamline the identification and execution of tactical environmental projects. We’ve also expanded our energy monitoring capabilities and our performance benchmarking, identifying our carbon footprint for buildings in 10 countries.

In addition to those tactical actions, we’ve also investigated potential long term impacts by exploring climate change risk, such as evaluating the potential effects of sea level rise. Lastly, we’ve recognized the importance of Pramerica and partner education, from investigating trends in environmental regulation to sharing our sustainability strategy and tactics with our business partners. Sustainability is here for the long term.

As with any developing discipline, the challenges are numerous. For example, collecting data to develop metrics and measure improvements is difficult. Financial metrics have been in place since the days of the abacus, but sustainability metrics are in their infancy. It is no simple task to address variables such as building types, occupancy and climate. However, the effort is well worthwhile. There is a link between performance and sustainability, and as that link becomes clearer, the adoption of sustainable practices will become more integrated into our everyday business practices.

That link between sustainability and performance applies to the investment community at large, not just real estate. As a result, we are working in concert within the overarching framework of Pramerica Financial, sharing our experiences and challenging each other as we pursue sustainable best practices.

In our 2010 report, which follows, we provide some highlights of our progress. We believe our five initiatives provide the necessary foundation to promote our actions toward achieving sustainability. Although we have made headway in each initiative, continuous improvement is sure to follow. We hope you find in this report our commitment to sustainability and are persuaded of the benefits it provides to the environment and our investors.

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