According to ZPPHiU, no tenant running a shop or service point in a shopping center can and should not be engaged by landlords in providing information on the carbon footprint of the premises. The electricity consumption measurement system is the responsibility of the building owner. The issue of the obligation to modernize all installations and devices in the facility is similar.
Katarzyna Lipka, Director of the Strategic Consulting and ESG Department at Cushman&Wakefield in Poland, commenting on the "Retail Asset Optimization for Tomorrow" report, emphasizes the challenges related to the need to reduce the energy consumption of shopping center buildings, as well as the requirement to examine their carbon footprint in the face of ESG regulations. He also emphasizes that work on increasing energy efficiency in order to reduce the impact on the environment goes hand in hand with optimizing operating costs. ZPPHiU members reacted with interest to this statement.
Previous experience shows that the only form of optimization in shopping centers includes shifting some cost categories from common to individual costs. Certainly, such actions will not contribute to the assumed reduction in the energy consumption of buildings. So what is this optimization of common costs – discussed by facility managers and owners?
– It is worth emphasizing that in Polish legislation there are no separate provisions regulating lease agreements regarding premises in shopping centers. The specificity of these contracts is that they are signed in order to conduct business activities – and therefore generate profit, not only for the owner of the center, but also for the tenant. This is a fundamental difference from lease agreements intended to meet housing needs. In each case, however, it is the owner of the property, not its user, who bears investment, legal, administrative and reporting obligations, the organization points out.
When preparing a lease offer, the landlord should calculate and take into account all costs that may be incurred during the duration of the contract and assume the business risk related to ownership.
“Recently, there have been instructions in the media on how shopping center owners should construct the so-called green annexes to contracts and what penalties should be used to force tenants to report data for which they are responsible. It is important that landlords are aware that the Polish legislator has not provided specific regulations for green contracts – which is also confirmed by Mrs. Marta Bijak-Haiduk, partner at Deloitte Legal, in her article in the Rzeczpospolita daily. However, it is difficult to expect that separate solutions will be defined, since the lease agreement in a shopping center itself is not subject to detailed legislation. ZPPHiU claims that lease agreements in shopping centers do not concern the standard lease of premises – such as, for example, an apartment – but are agreements aimed at generating profit. Therefore, it is absolutely reasonable that they be subject to specific, dedicated legal provisions. Until such solutions are introduced, it must be emphasized that both reporting and any modernization of the center required by law are the sole responsibility of the owners, and attempts to transfer these obligations to tenants do not result from applicable regulations. Tenants have the right to use landlords' data in their ESG reports, not the other way around – it is not tenants who build the carbon footprint of shopping center owners, but shopping centers that contribute to the carbon footprint of the products sold in these facilities. It is important that tenants who need such data have access to current, complete and transparent information from landlords," points out Zofia Morbiato, general director of the Association of Polish Trade and Service Employers (ZPPHiU).
The new European ESG requirements for real estate apply to their owners, not tenants. Moreover, at the current stage of legislation, they do not mean an obligation to modernize – but only require reporting the actual impact on the environment. Tenants of shops and service outlets in shopping centers cannot be forced to replace properly functioning equipment or install new ones based on the alleged requirements of ESG directives.
