Beijing businesses on board with green drive for Beautiful China

Businesses in Beijing have been intensifying their involvement in China's accelerating green transition.

In the Chinese capital's central business district (CBD), an increasing number of companies are emerging in the fields of energy and sustainable development, seeking to inject continuous green momentum into the CBD ecosystem.

The 2025 China results of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), released on Oct 28, showed that over 80 percent of tenants at China Central Place — including Johnson Johnson, Tesla and Deutsche Bank — are joining the green drive, transforming corporate responsibility into community consensus.

During the China regional launch of the GRESB Rating, China Central Place achieved the highest, five-star rating in the assessment, ranking first in the "mixed-use complex" category and earning the designation of "Global Industry Leader".

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a communique in Beijing on Oct 23, urging the acceleration of the green transition in all areas of economic and social development in an effort to build a Beautiful China. This was tied to the goals of achieving peak carbon and carbon neutrality.

In response to the national "carbon peak, carbon neutrality" strategy, since 2024, China Central Place's office tower and shopping mall operations have run on 100 percent green electricity — bringing in over 40 million kWh of green power annually and reducing more than 24,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, equivalent to the carbon-sequestration effect produced by planting roughly 1.3 million trees.

Xia Yanyan, director of the president's office at China Central Place and deputy general manager of CCP Beijing, described their environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainable-development pathway as a long-distance run with no finish line — spanning top-level design to daily operations, from regulatory imperative to ecological co-creation.

She described the five-star recognition by GRESB as a major milestone in its sustainable development journey, signifying the depth of ESG integration into its operations and asset management.

The 2025 release was hosted by GRESB in association with the development and reform commission of Chaoyang district, Beijing CBD Administrative Committee and Chaoyang District Commerce Bureau, drawing nearly 300 participants.

Mong-Trang Sarrazin, chief financial officer of GRESB, said the outstanding performance of China Central Place demonstrates the infinite possibilities that can be created when ESG is regarded as a value driver rather than just a compliance requirement.

Representatives from China Central Place say they employ full-dimension monitoring of key environmental metrics — such as energy-use efficiency, water-resource management and waste-cycle processes — and use 10 embedded core intelligent algorithms to achieve smart decision-making, unmanned operation and remote maintenance.

CCP has organized a variety of related activities — such as Earth Day and tree-planting events — with more than 80 percent of tenants participating.

As of last year, more than 2,200 real-estate companies, funds and developers had taken part in the GRESB Real Estate Assessment, covering $7 trillion in assets across more than 80 markets.