Your sustainability report is only as good as the data behind it

Every year, sustainability managers at property companies spend weeks pulling together energy consumption figures for their annual reports. Data arrives late from some utility providers, other figures are missing entirely, and somewhere in the middle of it all someone has to decide whether an estimate is good enough – or whether it will hold up if a reviewer asks questions.

Getting to net zero is genuinely difficult. Getting the data to prove you’re on your way there shouldn’t be.

The data problem nobody talks about

Sustainability reporting in real estate has matured considerably over the past few years. Frameworks like CSRD, GRESB and EU Taxonomy have raised the bar for what property owners need to disclose – and raised it again for what they need to be able to verify. It is no longer enough to report a number. You need to be able to explain where it came from, when it was collected, and how gaps were handled.

That is where many organisations run into trouble. The energy data feeding their sustainability reports is often collected manually – logging into utility portals, downloading files, consolidating spreadsheets. When the portfolio spans dozens of buildings and multiple utility providers, this process becomes genuinely burdensome. And the output, however carefully assembled, tends to be difficult to audit.

Property companies doing serious sustainability work – whether pursuing a GRESB rating, preparing a CSRD report, or documenting energy performance for green financing – need data that does more than exist. It needs to be complete, timely, and traceable.

Three things sustainability data actually needs to be

Complete. Gaps in meter readings are not just an inconvenience – they affect your scores. GRESB, for instance, evaluates data coverage as part of its assessment. A portfolio where 20% of meters have missing months is harder to defend than one with consistent collection across the board. Automated collection reduces gaps because the system is always running, not dependent on someone remembering to log in.

Timely. Old data is difficult to act on and difficult to trust. Knowing that your heating consumption increased in March is more useful in April than in October. Frequent, automated collection means the data is there when you need it – for operational decisions and for reporting deadlines alike.

Traceable. This is the one most often overlooked until someone asks a hard question. For CSRD assurance, GRESB assessments, or bank reviews tied to green loans, you need to be able to show exactly what data source a value came from and when it was received. Estimations need to be documented and disclosed. A clean audit trail is not a nice-to-have – it is what separates data that holds up from data that doesn’t.

What automated collection actually changes

Metry collects energy data automatically from over 700 connected data sources across northern Europe – utility portals, smart meters, file transfers, metering gateways and more. Every data point is validated and logged with its source and timestamp. When gaps occur, the system flags them; when they can be resolved automatically, they are.

The result is a dataset that arrives in your reporting tool, BI system, or sustainability platform already structured and traceable – ready to use, not ready to be cleaned.

Metry is part of EVORA Group, which means we work alongside sustainability consultants who deal with GRESB submissions, CSRD reporting and green finance requirements daily. We understand what the data needs to look like at the end of the process, because we see where it ends up.

Getting the data right is the first step

Property companies working seriously on sustainability rarely struggle with ambition. They struggle with infrastructure – the unglamorous work of making sure the numbers are actually there, actually correct, and actually defensible.

That is the problem Metry was built to solve. If you want to see how it works for your portfolio, we are happy to show you.