The One With… the Investor Who Switched Sides To Run The Climate Standard For Real Estate

CRREM tells real estate investors whether their assets are Paris-aligned or heading for stranding risk. Andrea Palmer is one year into the role as CRREM's first CEO — appointed after leading ESG integration for PGGM's global listed real estate portfolio, where she was pricing climate risk into valuations before most of the industry was paying attention. She previously worked at LaSalle Investment Management, GRESB, and Triodos. In this conversation she draws a hard line between two ways the industry uses CRREM — and argues that collapsing them is where the confusion starts. The first is transition risk assessment: understanding exposure, pricing it, and deciding whether to mitigate, accept, or get paid for it. The second is portfolio climate alignment — a different intent that can be achieved through capital reallocation without any CapEx. Andrea also addresses whether grid decarbonisation gives asset owners a free pass, reveals methodology assumptions being retired, and explains the deliberate strategy to embed CRREM into existing tech platforms rather than building a standalone tool.