Location: Ghent, Belgium
Benchmark User

Upgrade Estate

We recognize the crucial role every business must play in building a better world, and that’s why we aspire to become a Future-Fit Business. That means we must eliminate all of the potential negative impacts associated with what we buy, what we sell, and what we do.

In particular, buildings rely on fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases throughout their life-cycle. This is an industry-wide challenge. We commit to provide all our buildings with renewable energy and set them free from fossil fuels. Moreover, (new) buildings will need to become whole life-cycle carbon neutral – net zero – by 2050. This means that also embodied carbon, carbon emissions associated with materials and construction processes, will be addressed. We will make our buildings highly resource efficient and gradually increase their circularity performance. We will engage our suppliers, create awareness, detect and address hotspots in order to continually improve the value chain where we are part of and gradually pull suppliers and other stakeholders along in our wake.

We will offer our investors financial assets that safeguard the pursuit of future-fitness. In addition, we will seek to create positive impact wherever we can, to speed up society’s transition to future-fitness through our own actions and by assisting others on the journey.

In particular, people are always at the core of our strategic focus. We strive to add social value in everything we do. We want to connect people, strengthen people’s capacities and improve social cohesion among our residents in Upkot and Upliving, in the working environment at Upoffiz, among our employees and investors and everywhere in society where we (might) have an impact.

We acknowledge that incremental improvement of the status quo isn’t enough, so we intend to transform the way we do things, leading by example and encouraging other businesses to do the same.