Disclosure to Performance: Indoor Air Quality in Real Estate with Parag Cameron-Rastogi - #104

In this essential episode, we sit down with Parag Cameron Rastogi, Director of Real Asset Analytics at GRESB, to explore one of the most powerful yet often misunderstood forces shaping the future of indoor air quality: how we measure, benchmark, and value the performance of buildings at scale. GRESB—the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark—has trillions of dollars of assets in its system. It is the machinery behind how pension funds, investors, and asset managers assess risk, performance, and long-term value across portfolios spanning every continent, building type, and climate zone. And it is evolving—fast—from a disclosure-based model to a performance-based one. The Central Question We already have the tools and knowledge to deliver clean, healthy indoor air. So why is there still such a persistent gap between what we know works in theory and what actually happens in buildings? And how can we operationalize air quality data in a way that makes it financially material, benchmarkable, and valuable—not just for compliance, but for real-world decision-making? Key Topics Discussed: What GRESB Is and Why It Matters: How a standardized survey sent to building owners and managers became the global standard for assessing sustainability risk in real estate—and why pension funds with 50-year time horizons care deeply about the long-term performance of the assets they invest in. From Disclosure to Performance: The seismic shift happening in 2028, when GRESB moves from rewarding having data to rewarding what that data shows. Why this is a big deal for the industry—and what it means for air quality. The Binary Nature of Data: Why building portfolios either have full data coverage or almost none—and nothing in between. The fascinating bimodal distribution of data availability, and what it tells us about control, building type, and lease structures. Relative Benchmarking vs. Absolute Thresholds: Why finance speaks the language of risk, not absolutes. How GRESB uses relative benchmarking to compare buildings in context—and why this approach might be the missing piece in how we communicate air quality risk. This is a conversation about risk, value, and the machinery of change. It's about recognizing that if we want air quality to matter in the real world, we need to speak the language of the people who control the capital. We need to make it benchmarkable, measurable, and material. And we need to move from fluffy aspirations to hard performance. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rastogiparag/ https://www.gresb.com/ HOST: Simon Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-air-quality-matters/ GUEST: Parag Cameron Rastogi - Director of Real Asset Analytics, GRESB The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with Farmwood - Eurovent - Aico The One Take Podcast in Partnership with SafeTraces and Inbiot Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website. If you haven't checked out the YouTube channel its here. Do subscribe if you can, lots more content is coming soon. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: GRESB and the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark 00:02:00 What is GRESB? Origins and the Investor's Need for Risk Transparency 00:05:30 From Portfolio to Asset Level: The Evolution of GRESB Assessment 00:10:50 The Foundation and the Industry: How GRESB Standards are Governed 00:15:45 Data Coverage: The Binary Reality of Building Performance Data 00:24:00 The Disclosure to Performance Paradigm Shift 00:34:00 Control Structures and the Triple Net Problem 00:44:00 Relative Benchmarking: Why Context Matters in Risk Assessment 00:54:00 The Long Tail of Real Estate: Addressing the Forgotten Buildings 01:03:45 Operationalizing Data: From Collection to Business Value 01:12:00 The Automotive Analogy: Building Feedback Loops for Improvement 01:22:00 Stars, Quintiles, and Narrative-Based Rankings 01:32:00 Sustainability-Linked Loans and the Financial Incentive 01:42:00 Indoor Air Quality's Journey: From Disclosure to Performance Pillar 01:52:00 Beyond Productivity: Health, Harm, and the DALY Framework 01:58:00 The Predictive Future: From Rearview Mirror to Digital Twin 02:03:00 Parag's Journey: From Building Physics to Real Estate Finance 02:07:00 Closing Thoughts: The Power of Scale and Systemic Change