Good afternoon, and welcome. I'm very pleased to be here today with the rest of the team to present the evolution of our Better Places roadmap. We have an ambitious vision. Sustainability and the environmental transition present a significant opportunity for URW to create financial and social value while meeting the needs of cities, our retailers and partners, and the communities we serve. This plan propels URW into the future, placing us ahead of the pack while taking a thoughtful, diligent, and business-oriented approach. The group is recognized as a sustainability leader, thanks to our long-standing commitment to reduce our carbon emissions and limit the impact of our activities on the environment. Our ESG performance is consistently ranked in the top quartile by leading indices such as CDP, where we have received an A-list rating for the fifth year in a row.
The actions we have taken are aligned with new environmental regulation and have helped the future-proof of our portfolio. The evolution of our Better Places roadmap builds on the sustainability performance. We will be net zero on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, and we are setting a path to be carbon neutral on Scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 2050. Our plan has received upfront approval by the Science Based Targets initiative. To help us meet the changing needs of retailers and customers, we have created two innovative Better Places certification and the Sustainable Retail Index. Better Places also ensures that URW will continue to be a preferred partner to cities, allowing us to unlock future opportunities through urban regeneration, the densification of our existing assets, and building retrofit projects.
Our plan is fully aligned with the strategy we presented at our Investor Day in 2022, and we have made clear progress on the path to 2024 and beyond objectives we shared with you. On a like-for-like basis, EBITDA is back to 2019 levels, showing the quality of our portfolio and the strong performance of retailers as they continue to optimize their store network as part of their omni-channel strategies. With disposals to date contributing EUR 4.7 billion to net debt reduction, we are also making progress on our deleveraging goals. The radical reduction of our U.S. financial exposure remains our path forward, and as we said in July, our operational performance, our low cost of debt, and our ample liquidity give us flexibility on when we execute.
As a result of our deleveraging progress and performance, our net debt to EBITDA ratio has fallen from 14.6 times at the peak of the COVID pandemic to just 9.4 times below 2019 levels. Westfield Rise, the retail media agency we launched in October 2022, is on track to achieve our 2024 target of EUR 75 million in net revenues. On our development pipeline, we are delivering results that showcase the significant savoir-faire of URW. These projects represent our ability to combine global know-how and experience with local energy and spirit. This is reflected in our teams, who are delivering amazing projects that resonate with retailers and consumers and meet the changing needs of cities and communities.
Since March 2022, we have delivered the phased opening of the Topanga extension, which is 93% let, with one of the best luxury collections in Los Angeles. The first phase of our Coppermaker Square residential project in London, which is now 99% let. The Garbera extension in Spain, which is open in May, also 99% let. We have pre-let 80% of our Lightwell retrofit project in Paris La Défense, and we will deliver Westfield Hamburg in H1 2024, where we have a blended pre-letting at 78%. These projects will further improve our net debt to EBITDA ratio. On the pro forma basis, the 9.4 times would be 8.7 times. Building on these successes, our teams are working hard to unlock additional value-added projects in our existing assets.
This includes the densification of Westfield Rosny 2 in France and Westfield La Maquinista in Spain, and the recent buyout of our partner in Croydon, which increases our optionality on a unique urban regeneration opportunity in London. We are able to do all of this while keeping tight control on pre-development CapEx. Today's presentation follows the company's strategic focus in Europe. Carbon emissions from our U.S. assets represented 17% of group emissions in 2022. As we execute on our plan to radically reduce our U.S. financial exposure, this percentage will fall significantly. Our U.S. portfolio has a comprehensive energy and carbon action plan, which is fully funded for existing maintenance budgets. The energy savings generated by this plan reduce consumption and contribute to keeping tight control over operating costs, and therefore, are covered by our fixed common area maintenance revenue.
With renewable energy, we have identified the potential to increase solar panel generation at these U.S. assets by a factor of 10. This can provide over 100 GWh , enough to cover 100% of the common area electricity needs of our assets. At our Investor Day last year, we shared our business vision and the three trends that were shaping our sector: the rise of people-centering destination, the vital role of the physical store, and the core focus on sustainability and climate. While these trends are, of course, global, as a European-focused player, we face an even greater public, business, and consumer focus on sustainability. The EU has established a 2050 net zero target covering all industries, and this is in addition to already significant regulations and restrictions, which are not optional and apply to all players.
Instead of just waiting for these regulations to impact us, we have been taking action. Since we launched Better Places in 2016, we have worked hard to understand what is coming, build our expertise and know-how, shape a roadmap, and establish our credibility so we can also be a part of the conversation. That action has given us insight into the evolving needs of our partners. Since COVID, and with the severe weather events, we have seen—we have seen, sorry, sustainability and climate are top of mind, and we see accelerating demand for assets that perform from a sustainability perspective. This is true in our office business, where sustainability performance is already a must-have for tenants. Retailers are moving in that direction as well. Since 2019, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of major retailers setting science-based sustainability targets.
For URW, we can build on our current success and continue to evolve our platform, so we are fully aligned with retailers' commitment and their increasingly sustainability-oriented brand image and positioning. Retailers want to be in sustainable places that reflect their own ambitions, and alongside other retailers who also take this, the issue seriously. Generally, consumption of consumer goods keep growing, but European consumers are increasingly conscious of their environmental impact. These consumers demand that retailers and retail operators like URW take the right action to address that impact for them. They do not want to choose between sustainable and unsustainable. They want to know and have confidence that the places they go and the retailers they buy from are sustainable. Our approach enables us to capitalize on the most consistent and revenue-generative aspect, consumer preference and confidence in sustainable experience.
In creating our Evolve Better Places roadmap, we have looked to directly address the environmental transition and how we can be the right partner for the sustainable evolution of the retail industry. On the environmental transition, we are focused on the step change in our Better Places targets, the future proofing of our assets, and new opportunities we can create to unlock value as a partner to cities. When it comes to the evolution of retail, we have established a path that supports our retailers in their own transition, so that we are the right places for the brands of the future, while ensuring we provide the right offer to consumers to ultimately capture market share and drive footfall and sales. Diving into some details, our path to carbon neutrality is clearly set.
Through a detailed science-based approach, we'll cut carbon emissions on Scope 1 and 2 by 90% and neutralize the remaining 10%, becoming net zero on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030. We'll achieve carbon neutrality across Scopes 1 and 2 and 3 by 2050. Our approach strictly follows the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific consensus, which is recognized in the approval by the SBTi. And I am proud to say we are the first retail real estate company in the EU to receive approval on our net zero targets. We have carried out significant work since 2016 to improve the performance of our assets, a fact that is recognized in our high level of BREEAM In-Use certification, with 85% of our assets in Europe rated excellent or outstanding.
As a result, this plan requires limited additional CapEx on top of our current maintenance CapEx of around EUR 90 million per year. To meet our new Better Places targets, including net zero on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, we will invest an additional EUR 20 million annually over the next 7 years. The plan also creates new opportunities in areas such as solar power, power generation, and EV charging, which will reduce our total carbon footprint and generate a return on investment. This will require additional CapEx of EUR 8 million a year... and over 7 years. With Better Places, we also address the long-term sustainability of our revenues and the environmental transition of retailers. Over recent years, our ability to support retailers' omni-channel evolution has seen us gain market share as retailers consolidate their store portfolios. We see the same happening with retailers and their sustainability ambitions.
The evolution of our plan, in particular, two innovative new initiatives, will ensure we meet the evolving expectations of retailers and Better Places certification, created in partnership with WWF and Bureau Veritas, will assess each of our assets and grade them according to their performance. It will allow retailers and customers to know that when they invest in or shop at URW center, they are going to a partner who is also committed and actively engaged in the environmental transition. Our strong belief is that brands with credible plans for their own environmental transition will be the ones who are successful in the future. To navigate this, we must understand the commitment and progress retailers are making. In partnership with Good On You, an Australian sustainable brand rating agency, we have developed an innovative 360 approach called the Sustainable Retail Index.
This will give us greater insight in the commitment to the environmental transition within our retail mix. The Sustainable Retail Index combines third-party data from our partner and our own store-level assessment to track retailers' commitments and progress. It will give us unprecedented multidimensional perspective and has the potential to create a new standard beyond the green lease, which is now common in our industry. This is obviously not about naming and shaming. Individual retailer data will not be shared. It is about us having even a deeper understanding of our own retail mix, while also giving greater transparency as we make asset and group-level SRI ratings available to all stakeholders. Both the Sustainable Retail Index Better Places certification reinforce our positioning with customers and enhance our relationship with retailers, ensuring we continue to grow our market share, drive traffic, and support the sales performance of our tenants.
Our Better Places plan also helps leverage the significant value-creating opportunities we see in urban regeneration and retrofitting projects, while also advancing our mixed-use densification plans. URW has always been a city player focused on top markets in Europe. That is not changing. As cities accelerate on their own environmental transition, transforming artificialized or industrial land into new district, our track record, expertise, and long-term approach make us the right partner. That approach also increasingly benefits us in our mixed-use densification plans, where we can meet the needs of cities through housing, office, and infrastructure investments. And finally, the repricing of real estate assets that do not comply with regulation and that do not have strong sustainability credentials, will create additional opportunities for URW to acquire and retrofit assets.
This is what we are demonstrating with our capabilities in this area on our Lightwell project in La Défense business district. Our Better Places roadmap underpins and enhances our strategy, not just to 2024, but for many years beyond. It fundamentally strengthens our core business, builds new revenue platforms, and maximizes the value of our assets. We are very proud of our approach. It is science-based, detail-oriented, deliberate, and credible. It is now time for me to leave the floor to my colleagues. They will walk you through the specifics of how we are evolving our Better Places roadmap, how we are supporting the sustainable evolution of retail, how we are unlocking new opportunities, and obviously, how we are financing the plan. I will then come back for some closing remarks before we open the Q&A session. Thank you again so much for joining us today.
With that, Sylvain, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you, Jean-Marie, and good afternoon, everyone. So 18 months ago, during our Investor Day, we announced that we were working on a significant step change of our sustainability roadmap. Well, here we are today. I feel proud, and I am extremely happy to share with you our expanded Better Places roadmap. Better Places is a robust, science-based roadmap that builds upon solid foundations, our expertise, and a proven track record. At URW, sustainability is integrated at the core of our business, driving long-term value creation through our unique positioning as a preferred partner to major cities to lead their environmental transition. Our approach addresses all ESG dimensions and all stakeholders. Since we launched Better Places in 2016, we have set industry-leading standards, consistently ranking in the top quartile on ESG performance. Our progress to date has been very significant.
Since 2015, we have achieved a 41% reduction of our carbon emissions across our entire value chain, so including Scope 3. On Scope 1 and 2, the emissions that are directly under our control, we achieved a 71% reduction, and we have gained 41% in energy efficiency at group level. In addition, each year, we create significant social value for our communities, achieving almost EUR 40 million for 2022 alone. Of course, as a listed company, our ESG data is independently verified each year, providing you with detailed and transparent information. These significant achievements give us the confidence in our ability to go a step further. Of course, this is also about acceleration. Global warming has surged over the past decade, and our world today is very different from our world in 2015.
Challenges such as climate change, scarcity of resources, and social cohesion are having an increasingly direct impact on the places where we live. Faced with the urgency of climate change, we believe URW has a vital role to play in the urban regeneration of cities and in the way we live in them. Driving this transformation is at the core of our business model as a real estate developer, curator, and operator of sustainable places. For URW, sustainability is a key driver for long-term value creation. Our Better Places roadmap focuses on three pillars. The first one is about environmental transition, how we create and operate sustainable places with a strong focus on carbon emissions reduction. The second one is sustainable experience, how we support the sustainable evolution of retail in partnership with retailers and for our consumers.
The third one is our thriving communities, creating significant economic and social value for our communities. Let's now look at our new sustainability commitments in more detail, starting with the environmental transition. First, I would like to emphasize what Jean-Marie just shared with us about our new net zero SBTi certification. We already had SBTi-approved near-term targets for 2030, and we're now the first company in our industry, in continental Europe, to have our science-based net zero targets approved by the SBTi, and by the way, just the sixth CAC 40 company to obtain such an approval. We are proud to play our part in the transition by setting targets that are truly grounded in climate science. Now, what does net zero really mean? Being net zero is first and foremost about carbon emissions reduction.
So in line with the SBTi Net- Zero Corporate St andard, we prioritize the rapid and deep reduction of scope 1 and 2 emissions, and we target a 90% reduction in absolute value by 2030. This is a step up from our previous commitment of 80%. Now, looking at our entire value chain, i.e., scope 1, 2, and 3, as strictly defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, we are also aligned with SBTi expectations. So we maintain our near-term commitment to reduce our absolute carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and we're now adding a new long-term commitment of 90% by 2050. In addition, we're committing to help our value chain reduce their own carbon emissions, which are generally known as avoided emissions.
Very importantly, we commit to neutralize any residual emissions, so the 10% that cannot be reduced through permanent carbon removal projects, which I will detail later on. The beauty of our plan is that our commitment is backed by a comprehensive, long-term energy action plan that has been prepared on each single asset by our engineering, technical, and facilities management teams. This is this detailed bottom-up planning that has allowed us to identify four main levers. The first one is reduction of energy consumption. I don't want to state the obvious here, but of course, the best way to reduce energy consumption is to not consume it in the first place... and our experience from supporting the energy crisis in 2022, gives us confidence to be able to achieve significant gain at no cost and with no negative impact on the customer experience.
The second lever is about energy efficiency, targeting a 50% improvement in energy intensity by 2030. So this includes a range of technical projects such as roof insulation, optimizing building management systems, the replacement of HVAC system. The third lever is to work out on our energy mix, and we will progressively phase out fossil fuels, in particular, by replacing legacy gas boilers with efficient heat pump technologies. And fourth, fugitive emissions from cooling units will be addressed through leak detection systems and the replacement of current gases and fluids. The contribution of each identified lever has been also carefully assessed by our teams. Improving energy efficiency and our energy mix will be our primary areas of focus in the coming years. So this is what makes our carbon reduction commitment even more robust.
For every single asset within our portfolio, we have a clear, identified, and achievable pathway to achieve our target. A key component of our progress in reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions has been our ability to transition to 100% renewable electricity for the common areas of our assets. So in order to secure supply, reduce our overall carbon footprint, but also generate revenues, we have made the active decision to develop our renewable energy production capacity with a very ambitious solar PV plan for the group. Overall, our production capacity will be scaled up to 50 MW peak by 2030, generating the equivalent of approximately 30% of our needs. This is for Europe only, and our U.S. teams are currently working on a very ambitious solar plan at their own scale.
We have a robust technical plan towards net zero, and this plan has also been priced by our technical teams. The good news is that the delivery of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction target will require only limited CapEx, because we already have a portfolio of highly sustainable assets. 85% of our assets in Europe have received the best ratings from the BREEAM In-Use certification, and this compares to less than 30% for our industry in Europe. Our approach has always been to continuously improve our locations through progressive maintenance and enhancement works. This is what gives us these excellent ratings and also the confidence in our ability to finance the transition with limited investments. First of all, we will continue to allocate about 30% of our maintenance CapEx to support their continued environmental transition.
Our renewable energy plan represents a EUR 50 million investment, about EUR 8 million per year, and this will generate savings and revenues. Finally, we're committing to an additional investment of EUR 20 million per year over 7 years, taking us to 2030. Fabrice will provide you with more financial details on our CapEx plan in his own presentation. Let's now focus on Scope 3. Our Scope 3 emissions reporting is fully aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It includes three main areas. First are the emissions from our tenants' in-store operations, including their own energy consumption. Second is the construction of new development projects, and third is the transport of our visitors to our centers. Let's start with the first one, our tenants, engaging with them on their in-store operations.
By 2030, we're taking the assumption that 80% of tenants' electricity consumption will be covered by renewable energy, including directly providing them with green electricity where it's possible and achievable. And by the way, as most of you know, a number of our large tenants have already made public commitments to procure 100% green electricity. And from an energy perspective, we're conservatively assuming a 25% reduction in energy intensity across all markets compared to a 2015 baseline. These will be made possible, thanks to different levers, including our pioneering Green lease. The Green lease establishes a shared commitment between landlord and tenant on a range of sustainability issues, like LED lighting, water saving, low impact materials, but as well, an undertaking to procure renewable energy. The rollout of sub-metering systems will also improve monitoring of tenants' own energy efficiency savings.
And finally, regulations also apply to tenants, including the French Décret Tertiaire, targeting a 40% reduction in energy intensity by 2030. So if you take all these elements into consideration, we are confident that we can deliver an impact at scale here. Let's now focus on the second area of our Scope 3, the construction of new development projects. Again, we were a pioneer in the industry with our commitment back in 2015 to reduce the average embodied carbon intensity of our projects by 35%. Now, as you can see, this is not a completely linear path, considering the duration of our development projects. If you take Hamburg, for example, while delivery will be in 2024, this has really been a 10-year journey from design to build, and yet we're able to achieve a significant reduction.
As you can see, we expect an accelerated reduction in the coming years, driven by progress in three key areas. The first one are program alternatives, such as open-air malls, optimized parking. The second one is to work on the design by incorporating sustainable materials, like wood or other bio-sourced materials. And third, are technical components, like the use of low-carbon concrete, as well as the recovery and reuse of existing materials from demolition. Jean-Marie spoke about Lightwell, our ongoing retrofit of an existing office building in La Défense. This is a great example of this, with more than 85% recycling rate. And for our office tower, Trinity, also in La Défense, which was, by the way, awarded the best tall office building worldwide last year. Low-carbon concrete represents more than 70% of the total concrete that is being used.
So to achieve this, our engineers have developed a strong expertise, and they are on a constant lookout for innovation and best practices available, partnering with the best experts, architects, designers, and construction companies. Finally, the third area of Scope three is the one that creates the greatest amount of Scope three emissions. Our visitors get to our center. The good news is that URW's assets are city center assets, highly connected to public transport, and you have to realize that almost half of our European visitors already use sustainable means of transport. Two examples shown here. Westfield Forum des Halles in Paris, the number one underground station in the world by footfall, and also Westfield Stratford City in London, another highly connected assets.
Cities continue to invest in sustainable transport infrastructure, which is further enhancing both the sustainability credentials, but also the consumer appeal and the value potential of these locations. Vincent will be sharing more on the long-term value creation potential of our unique urban infrastructure assets in dense, well-connected, and sought-after areas. To accelerate the shift towards sustainable transportation, we have also established robust mobility action plans on every single asset. Our target is for the share of sustainable transport to reach over 60% by 2030, and this includes actively supporting local authorities in the development of their public infrastructure or any other low-carbon mobility solutions. Supporting the transition towards electric vehicle is also key, and as a first phase, we will reach more than 4,000 electric vehicle charging points by 2030 in Europe only. Fabrice will provide full financial details in his presentation.
Now, our environmental plan goes beyond carbon. We must also transform the way we live and do business in a way that protects our shared natural resources. And we have decided to focus our actions on three elements: biodiversity, waste, and water. In terms of biodiversity, we are renewing our commitment that all new development projects will achieve a biodiversity net gain, and in addition, we will implement renaturation projects on 100% of our assets. All URW asset will develop water reuse solution by 2030, while water consumption intensity by footfall will be cut by 20%. And finally, waste management is absolutely key for our tenants. It's another area where we can have an impact, and we will engage our tenants to target a 15% reduction by 2030, and an overall recycling rate of 70% by 2030.
Again, these commitments are already captured in the existing regular maintenance and enhancement CapEx of our assets, with no increase. As with our carbon commitments, it is key for us to partner with recognized external stakeholders to assess the impact of our activities and how we expect to move forward. So in this case, we're working with WWF France as a representative of the Science-Based Targets Network, an organization that builds on the momentum of the SBTi to enable companies and cities to set targets for climate and for nature. I mentioned earlier that in full alignment with the SBTi Net-Zero corporate standard, we will neutralize our residual emissions, so the 10% that cannot be reduced. And we're achieving this by investing in projects to protect and restore biodiversity at scale, and in doing so, removing and permanently storing carbon away from the atmosphere.
These are long-term projects, and we have to start now, partnering with recognized, reputable, credible organizations. URW will start investing in two nature-based projects in this space. First, we have made a EUR 5 million investment in the Mirova Climate Fund for Nature, developed and operated by a partner with a strong track record in this field. The fund is specifically covering, developing, and protecting over 100,000 hectares of forestation, and our contribution represents the removal of approximately 16,000 tons of CO2 annually between 2030 and 2050, corresponding to the 10% of residual emissions from our scope 1 and 2. Okay, therefore, we are reducing the residual emission to 10% starting 2030.
Our second investment is in the WWF Nature Impact Fund, working specifically on preserving the biodiversity of 15,000 hectares of threatened forest in France, close to home. The final component of our environmental actions focuses on the adaptation to climate change. We have a strong platform of prevention measures at almost over all of our assets, such as preventive maintenance on heating and cooling systems to ensure the reliability of our equipment in case of extreme events. We have already mapped all the physical risk to our assets with AXA Climate, and using reference climate change scenarios, this study did not identify any material impact by 2030. Therefore, we're able to implement risk mitigation measures by 2030 through our existing regular CapEx budget and plan. That's for the environmental transition, the first pillar of our roadmap.
The second one is sustainable experience, and Anne-Sophie will take you through our main initiatives in this space. Let me just quickly emphasize our vision and our targets. Welcoming more than 900 million visits per year, we believe we have a responsibility to support the industry's transition towards a more sustainable retail. We support this evolution through three main initiatives on our assets, with our tenants, and for our visitors. Better Places certification scheme will provide visibility on the sustainable performance of our assets. This is a holistic assessment which leverages and builds on existing building standards to provide transparency on sustainable best practices from in-store operations and from our tenants, and this will be fully detailed by Anne-Sophie. We will certify 100% of our standing assets by the end of 2027.
Second, we are introducing the Sustainable Retail Index to assess retailers' sustainability commitments, ambition, and performance at a company, product, and store operations level. Our target is to assess 100% of eligible URW revenues by 2027, and this will cover approximately 75% of our current MGR. Third, from a customer journey point of view, we're aiming at launching at least one campaign per year to raise our visitors' awareness on sustainability. The third pillar of our roadmap is thriving communities. URW generates a significant economic and social value, and as you all know, this is an integral part of our business model. We support local communities when we invest in our assets, we create local economic value, and we help our communities thrive. We also believe that retail is a rare example of an industry where the social mobility ladder still truly works.
This is why our objective is to support 15,000 people annually through training, social inclusion, and employment opportunities. We're also a catalyst for growth in the cities and communities where we operate, and we are proud of our contribution in terms of shared growth, social inclusion, and community reach. As a few examples, we're an active supporter of the development of local champions, and we have 20% of our tenants that are local entrepreneurs. We're also a direct contributor to local economic development, and almost 133,000 jobs are directly associated to our locations in Europe. We are proud of the role that we play as a modern-day agora, offering essential services to millions of citizens. Hamburg, which will be inaugurated this coming spring, is a great example of the social and economic value that we create for our communities.
This new urban mixed-use district is a compelling illustration of the fifteen-minute city, with apartments, offices, three hotels, entertainment, and 200 shopping center directly connected to the city center through sustainable means of transport. Beyond the EUR 1.6 billion of total investment costs, this development sustains over 21,000 jobs. It promotes sustainable behaviors, social inclusion, and it works in the interest of our local community. Of course, thriving communities starts with our own URW community, and our entire plan is only made possible thanks to our engaged teams, embracing sustainability as a core component of our identity, operating model, and working culture. It starts with an inspiring business vision and the full commitment from the top, starting with our CEO, the role modeling of our leaders, and strong governance, with increased ESG components in our Management Board, STI, and group-wide long-term incentive plan.
This cascades throughout the organization, with 100% of URW employees having at least one annual sustainable business transformation objective. It is also about attracting and retaining the talent we need, and learning and development plays an absolutely essential role here to ensure our teams have the right skill sets for the transition. We have set a comprehensive training plan, including the AXA Climate School and the Climate Fresk, and thanks to this strong engagement, URW was actually the first CAC 40 company and the first commercial real estate group in France to receive the certified Climate Fresk company label. And we will continue to ensure that each year, a minimum of 95% of our employees receive specific sustainability training. Diversity and inclusion is another key component of our success, and we're committed to maintain at least 40% of women in leadership positions.
Embedding sustainability at the core of an organization's operating model is truly a group-wide transformative journey. So that's for our sustainability roadmap. I hope you will see that this is built on a robust, science-based approach. It's a comprehensive commitment to advance the sustainable transition of cities. We recognize that this is a complex topic, and we would be happy to answer any question during the Q&A or at a later date. Thank you very much. I will now hand over to Anne-Sophie to further detail the second pillar of our Better Places roadmap, sustainable experience, and how we support the sustainable evolution of retail. Anne-Sophie, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you, Vincent. Thank you, Sylvain. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anne-Sophie Sancerre. I am the Chief Customer and Retail Officer at URW. My role is to focus on the fact that our vision to create sustainable places that reinvent being together a reality. It is a vision that personally inspires me, and I am very exciting to be with you today... As Jean-Marie said, we are working to integrate sustainability into everything we do. How we operate our assets, how we shape customer experience, how we drive sales and footfall, and how we contribute to the success of our retailers. I'm going to introduce two key initiatives that we are launching today. These will allow us to even go further in supporting the sustainable evolution of retail. Let's start with some context on what is driving this evolution.
According to a recent Roland Berger report, overall consumption levels show no signs of slowing down. They expect a 7% annual growth in consumer goods sales. And consumption patterns are evolving as consumers' expectations rise when it comes to sustainability. When we talk to the visitors of our shopping centers across Europe, they are very clear about their expectations. They want us to sort with all that. They want to visit the shopping centers that carry out sustainable initiatives, and they want us to do the work for them when it comes to making more sustainable choices. Retailers are also going further to meet changing consumers' expectations. Established retailers are accelerating their sustainability commitments. 40% of our top 100 tenants already have near-term targets approved by the SBTi, a figure that has risen a lot just last year.
We also see third parties supporting the push for greater transparency. URW has a role to play in this changing ecosystem, and we are proud to support the sustainable evolution of the retail industry. The great news, as Jean-Marie and Sylvain said, is that sustainable retail, our sustainable retail journey has strong foundations. We've already started. You've heard that our assets are already recognized as highly sustainable. Two-thirds of our tenants are signed with us under green leases, which require tenants and landlords to take together measures to lower the environmental impact. We are also offering diverse, sustainable experiences in our shopping centers. For instance, our three-year partnership with the National Forestry Office at this Westfield Vélizy 2 is a great example of helping raise awareness to our customers of the importance of biodiversity in our ecosystem.
We have a strong track record of attracting fantastic sustainable brands like Café Joyeux or Freshly Cosmetics. Building on these strong foundations, we are launching two major new initiatives to focus on the changing expectations of consumers and Better Places certification will demonstrate and accelerate the sustainability performance of our assets and provide greater disclosure and transparency. While the Sustainable Retail Index, which form parts Better Places certification, will enable us to measure retailers' commitment to the environmental transition. For both, we are building on existing certification schemes with the help of recognized experts, to set a new standard in the market that reflects our business and ambitions. These programs will ensure that our places are the right fit for retailers and brands as they evolve, and give customers the sustainable experience they are looking for.
These initiatives will strengthen our business resilience, act as growth and value drivers, and help us gain footfall, sales, and market share. Let's take a closer look at each of these initiatives, starting Better Places certification is a holistic approach that addresses sustainability's topics at all levels. Existing standards like BREEAM and EPC provide a foundation, but focus only on the building. They do not address what's happening inside the Better Places certification combines key sustainability performance criteria, as well as a content dimension. Here, you can see the 9 categories, so which represent over 90 criteria, covering all environmental and social dimensions that make Better Places certification. these criteria will be reviewed regularly to match the changing regulation and our increasing level of ambition.
This certification and level will be displayed at the entrance of each shopping center, and consumers will be able to find the details of the rating on each of the shopping centers' websites. It is our strong conviction that this will set new standards for the retail real estate Better Places certification has been developed in partnership with internationally recognized experts. WWF, on one side, the world's leading independent conservation organization, has supported the development of our Better Places criteria, covering key areas such as biodiversity, water, and mobility. Bureau Veritas, a world leader in audit and certification services, supported us in the development of technical standards and the audit method. They will carry out technical audits to assess compliance with the criteria. Let's hear from these partners now.
Bureau Veritas is a world leader in testing, inspection, and certification. It means we're here to help different industries or companies to check that they are compliant to standards. We are really proud to work as Bureau Veritas for URW, that's for sure.
WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature, is the first worldwide environmental NGO. Our mission is to build a future where human can live in harmony with nature. The ambition of the partnership between WWF and URW is to promote sustainable consumption, to transform the way we produce, the way we consume, and also to contribute to biodiversity, preservation, and restoration project on the ground.
We are working Better Places certification. it's a label that we have built together. These initiatives are crucial. It's important to show to the ecosystem that your organization, your procedures, your standards, are now respecting a number of criteria. And I do believe as well that in the shopping centers, the customers will check.
Our role Better Places certification was to bring expertise around environmental issues, like biodiversity, for instance, like climate, to work toward a more sustainable offer and behavioral changes.
We help to define the criteria. What is relevant for your industry, for a shopping center, is not as relevant as for a car plant. On the field, we have conducted test audits, so we were able to check the criteria and to check as well the capacity of URW employees to self-assess. And then on top of that, there was external assessment conducted by us. I mean, 94 criteria to be able to self-assess, to be able, as well, to be transparent, and also to be controlled. Everyone was involved and challenged, so that's why this project was really about the partnership.
It's really our legitimacy to challenge the company when they launch good project like that, and to play the role of critical friends so that you can enter a progress pathway to be sure you are on a good way, a good path, and you take the good criteria in your project.
What is key is that, as a trusted, third party, we were able also to challenge, these standards to make sure that it was the best that it was required.
A big thank you to Rémy Pantel and, Catherine Chardon, and all our partners, our partners at WWF and Bureau Veritas, for their support in this initiative. So we have a clear roadmap, for the rollout Better Places certification. 10 assets will be rolled out, by end of 2024, and all our, European, shopping center portfolio within the next three years, by end of 2027, in order to match our URW's target of net zero. We are confident Better Places certification will be a critical tool in driving our assets towards our targets. Let's move now to the Sustainable Retail Index. I want to start by providing some context on what's happening in the market. The industry is evolving, and it's exciting to see retailers taking action when it comes to their environmental, transition.
Many of our tenants are making significant corporate commitments, whether it is Inditex plan to reduce their carbon footprint by at least 90% by 2024, or Carrefour making its top 100 suppliers adopt a 1.5-degree trajectory by 2026. We see that major players are making major plans. We also have retailers and distributors actively promoting sustainable brands and products, like Selfridges Project Earth or Galeries Lafayette, who launched Go for Good. And of course, sustainable brands like Veja, Patagonia, keep growing. As I mentioned earlier, third-party players are also part of the conversation, pushing transparency and influencing behavior. For example, Too Good To Go is an app that is widely used in our shopping centers that's aim at reducing food waste by connecting customers to restaurants and stores with unsold foods.
In this environment, we want to meet the expectations of retailers and consumers, and ensure we remain the right partner for them. In simple terms, the Sustainable Retail Index allows us to measure the sustainability progress of our retailers. But it is more than that. For consumers, it mean we can meet their evolving expectations by curating the right offer for them. For retailers, it will enable us to engage in a discussion with them on a tangible and analytical basis, and support them with their own sustainable ambitions. But to be crystal clear, this is not about naming and shaming retailers. We will not publicly disclose individual ratings. Our mission is to help everybody on the sustainable transition route to make consistent and meaningful improvements. The Sustainable Retail Index will be disclosed in the overall rating Better Places certification for each asset.
It will also signal our intent to go further than the existing Scope 1, 2, 3 requirements as we address the content of our shopping centers. These requirements do not take into consideration the content of our assets or any of our retailers' impacts beyond energy-related carbon emissions. Just Better Places certification, the sustainable Retail Index is a robust approach developed in partnership with specialists. Let's take a closer look at how it works. We developed the Sustainable Retail Index in partnership with Good On You, a global sustainable brand rating company. The Sustainable Retail Index assesses three criteria: retailers' company levels, ambition, commitment, and initiatives; the product level, so how... It's an approach where around things like raw material, recycling material, how the product is produced; and at the store-specific level, such as second-hand services or banning plastic bags.
The two first criteria account for 75% of the overall rating and are calculated based on Good On You's industry-leading brand rating system. The third criteria accounts for 25% of the overall score. For this, our teams will work locally to conduct a store-specific assessment of the sustainable practices being carried out at every URW asset by our retailers. This generates an overall Sustainable Retail Index rating on a five-level scale, from less advanced to most advanced. At a group level, and on a yearly basis, we plan to report on how much our eligible revenues have been assessed by the Sustainable Retail Index and their rating. It is our intention that this tool will be further developed to include retailers from other sectors than fashion, such as jewelry, health and beauty, sports.
This will be done by 2024, and then home, technology, and food, and beverages will be done after that. Our objective is to have 100% of our eligible revenues in Europe covered by the Sustainable Retail Index by end of 2027. Let's now hear from Sandra Capponi, founder of Good On You.
URW had come up with the concept of a Sustainable Retail Index, so they could start understanding, measuring, and improving their impact. When they were researching where to find the information they needed to assess brands against such an index, they discovered Good On You. We started Good On You back in 2015 to create a brand rating system that would help people that wanted to shop sustainably understand all the complex issues in sustainability and make better, more informed choices. So we're really excited about this opportunity to scale our impact through this partnership with URW. URW is at a unique intersection where they can influence both merchants and retailers right through to the end customer. For the first time, we're able to take this important sustainability information that consumers are looking for, to the physical retail space....
The Good On You rating system processes over 1,000 data points against more than 100 key sustainability issues to assess a brand's impact on three pillars: people, planet, and animals. We've rated over 5,000 brands in fashion. We're looking at impacts and issues across the entire supply chain, so everything from whether a brand is paying living wages, if it's addressing its climate change impacts and tackling circularity, as well as what it's doing to protect animal welfare. Our partnership with URW really is a win-win. Through this partnership, we can reach more consumers, rate more brands, and catalyze the transition towards a more sustainable future. Together, we're starting by rating over 800 of URW's fashion brands, but this is just the beginning.
URW has thousands of merchants and is looking to scale our approach to other customer verticals, starting in the beauty segment, which we will be rating by the end of this year. From beauty, we'll be thinking about homewares, electronics, even food and beverage, all the areas that consumers love to shop in. We're so excited about how our collaboration with URW can fast-track this transition.
A big thank you to Sandra and to the Good On You team. We're very excited by the rating we've put in place together, and we know that this partnership will go Better Places certifications enables us to accelerate the evolution of each asset, but it also allows us to share our performance with consumers and retailers. Through our Westfield platform, we are giving the brands the opportunity to share their sustainability journey with consumers. Our in-house retail media agency, Westfield Rise, and the Westfield Good Festival, an annual event that takes place in all our Westfield centers across Europe, are powerful tools here, too. We are proud to play our part in the sustainable evolution of retail.
With our Better Places roadmap, and in particular, the two initiatives I've shared today, we are meeting the expectations of consumers when it comes to sustainability, developing the right environment for retailers to showcase their practices and engage with us, and enhancing the way we operate our shopping centers. We are confident this will support, it will support us in driving the footfall, sales, and gaining market share in our shopping centers. We are going to take a short break now, and we'll start again in 15 minutes with Vincent's presentation. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us back after this nice break. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Vincent Rouget, and I joined URW in June as Chief Strategy and Investment Officer. I previously spent 16 years at a real estate investment firm and was an investment banker in Paris and New York before that. I want to start by sharing briefly why I joined URW. First reason was that URW owns the very best assets, largely non-replicable, which is a huge strength at the onset of massive changes in the real estate sector. Second, the purpose of reinventing being together also resonated a lot with me. Our high-footfall properties are so much more than just shopping and leisure destinations.
In a world dominated by digital communication and, increasingly, artificial intelligence, you will see that URW will play a vital role in this future because it provides and activates fantastic physical spaces for real-life human connections. Real-life human connections. This will always be a focus. I personally believe that is the reason why our assets recovered so well after COVID. Together with URW's long-standing ESG leadership and ambitions, the opportunity was simply just too attractive to pass up for me. So today, I'm very excited to share with you the many opportunities we see ahead for URW, and why our commitment to sustainability and better places will be a key competitive advantage in the coming decade, at a time when many industries will suffer the cost of their own ESG transition.
I will start with the big picture around the structural macro trends that are fundamentally shifting the real estate landscape today and tomorrow. I'll then share with you our thoughts on why URW has a unique future-proof portfolio of irreplaceable urban infrastructure assets, which makes us ideally placed to navigate the current macro environment well and outperform as a key partner to cities. Finally, we believe there is a clear business case for sustainability, and we see substantial value creation opportunities for URW in this industry-defining decade to come. But first things first. The environmental transition is right here, right now. Official decarbonization objectives are ambitious. You all know those pathways. And since COVID and COP26, we have witnessed a major step change in institutional capital commitments relating to net zero strategies. This is a big game changer for our sector.
Commercial real estate belongs mainly to institutional capital, and institutional capital is very good at effecting change once a conviction is forged. So if top-rated ESG assets are the main course on the institutional capital menu, then the entire value chain rapidly adjusts to make sure it is serving the right dishes. The main challenge in this context, which represents a big opportunity for us, is that the supply side is not yet fully ready. If we look at the regulatory framework, it is also moving very fast. In Europe, regulations are ambitious, but as you can see from this slide, the landscape is complex and quite a bit messy to some extent, with some limited alignment across markets in reality.
We also share here a summary of an illustrative study, which looked at both a residential and office development carried out in 2021 under the new French regulations, RE2020. Interestingly, the study removed any limitations on design, costs, or build efforts to minimize carbon footprints. Even in this perfect world scenario, up to 33% reduction in carbon footprint only was calculated, while overall construction costs increased by between 10%-13%. This confirms two things to us. First, the public targets are ambitious, and in certain cases, go even beyond the current level of technical know-how. Second, the environmental transition will generate some cost inflation across the industry. We certainly see that struggle playing out with the latest announcements from the UK, German, and French governments, especially vis-à-vis the end consumer.
So successful players will need a track record and a high level of expertise to navigate it favorably. URW has these things already. We are accelerating with Better Places, and we can be part of this important conversation. In this context, it is key to have a clear approach for sustainable development. The first thing to acknowledge is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this complex equation. So for each opportunity we assess with the teams, we must strike the right balance between achieving energy efficiency improvements, reducing carbon footprint meaningfully, and creating the right product. If the objective was just to limit carbon emissions, a simple decision would be to do nothing, i.e., no retrofitting or no investment, right? But then you no longer have a suitable product for which there's meaningful demand. It may remain vacant, and you end up with an already built, unused asset.
Or if not vacant, it will continue emitting the same as before and soon will become stranded in addition to being heavily exposed to rising in energy costs. So in this complex environment, with so many considerations, I think our skill and experience allow us to strike the right balance between those various elements and unlocking value. And this is exactly what we have done with great success within our portfolio. Let's take the real-world example of a Trinity office tower in Paris La Défense, the best tall office building in the world last year. Even during COVID, we managed to lease Trinity faster, significantly higher rents, and lower tenant incentives than our competition. And I am pleased to announce that with a recent new lease, Trinity is now at 96% occupancy.
An interesting fact to highlight here is that competing projects in this market also had very good ESG credentials. We believe strongly in green premium for top ESG assets, and sustainability is a must-have, but having the right product in the right location still matters a lot, and this is what the success of the Trinity project shows to us. You need to provide the whole package. Yet another example of the complexity of this revolution. In our view, we'll continue to see an acceleration of the major bifurcation happening in the real estate market right now. As we all know, the second major trend affecting real estate industry is higher inflation and the fastest interest rate increase ever implemented by the ECB.
At 4.5%, it is highest rate since 1999, even if it seems we are close to the end of the rate increase cycle now. The events of the last 15 years have pushed record central bank balance sheet expansion and market liquidity, and this resulted in high inflation, which triggered a forceful reaction from central banks. This has already had a meaningful impact on investment volumes in the real estate sector, which fell, as you can see here, and shall trigger some valuation recalibration in many pockets of the market in the years to come. Why are we not concerned by such unprecedented environment?
This chart shows the difference over time between the 5-year interest rates and the annual wage growth, together with 10-year averages before and after Marco Draghi's famous, "Whatever it takes." We went from +0.6% before whatever it takes, to -1.5% since 2012, a significant negative real interest rates since 2012. I let you have a look at the chart. So the key reason behind record rates today is record wage growth. In the past, this has not been a bad thing for the type of retail assets we operate at URW, as it translated directly into retail consumption. We could argue that not so much has changed on that front.
As you can see, that real rates condition remain still pretty attractive today, very close to the last ten-year average, which is quite unprecedented from an historical perspective. I will also stress that the root cause of this is largely driven by an all-time low unemployment rate at 6%, versus 10% last time when the interest rates were above 3%, i.e., in 2011. So very different market conditions than back then. In summary, we believe that we are in a good position versus the broader industry.... regarding the recent interest rates increase, and this is because we have attractive prospects of medium-term positive rental growth in real terms, and that's the key differentiating factor. On the other hand, the end of free money is badly hurting digital or e-commerce businesses with no business models.
There are no profits yesterday, and they shall incur more losses even tomorrow because of the high rates. In fact, we're quite excited about what lies ahead. Why? If we look at the current situation using an imperfect measure, EPCs, only around 21% of existing office stock is EPC B or better across Europe. According to Knight Frank, 39% of investors is already looking for at least EPC B-rated assets for new acquisitions. That shows an 18-point gap already today. The supply of new or redeveloped buildings being constrained at only 1.5%-2% per year, the ESG adjustments of institutional portfolios will take a long time. Beyond that, our conviction is that the share of investors moving to a minimum B rating will likely grow over time, further increasing this mismatch. This is where our opportunity lies.
We have the very best assets, and a Better Places roadmap will reinforce our position among the happy few who own and operate the right type of properties. Another big opportunity exists beyond the ESG supply-demand mismatch, the ongoing rebalancing of investment market priorities. When we look at the investment market, real estate volumes have been driven by high financial liquidity over the last decade. This looks like an almost perfect correlation between those two charts. And financial liquidity will in turn remain elevated in Europe for years to come. We also see that non-prime and poorly located office products will go through a significant investor demand reduction for two main reasons: because the office market is strongly impacted by the shift to more work from home, and because of the acceleration of technical obsolescence from an ESG perspective.
So let's just assume office investment volumes go back down to 2012 levels in this context. It means about EUR 30 billion will need to find a new home somewhere else, ideally, where it can find top ESG assets. So if the shopping center asset class, which accounted for only EUR 11 billion of investment in 2022, was to receive part of this liquidity, thanks to its strong ESG performance, it can have a big impact on valuation levels. And we saw what substantial liquidity shifts in narrow asset classes have meant in the past. For example, logistics yields, they dropped from 7.5% down to sub-4% between 2012 and 2021. It was more than twice the quantum of interest rate decline over exactly the same period.
For those various reasons, we are convinced that high-quality retail assets like ours are very well positioned to benefit from structural, ESG, and investment market channel shifts in the years ahead. We have now covered how ESG and interest rates are fundamentally reshaping the investment market and future demand for real estate assets. I'm now very excited to detail why we believe URW's retail business is sustainable at its core. As a new member of the team, I've spent time visiting and getting to know our fantastic assets. The bottom line for me, I simply do not view this as a portfolio of shopping centers. We own important pieces of highly desirable cities. These are urban infrastructure assets, which are anchored by vibrant and high-footfall destination retail.
Here are some aerial views of Westfield La Maquinista in Barcelona on the left, and Westfield Donau Zentrum in Vienna on the right. I love it. Look at how dense those places are. In a nutshell, we operate in sought-after urban areas with high consumer purchasing power. Land availability is scarce in our markets and getting even scarcer with various laws across Europe, regulating the non-artificialization of land, so you simply cannot replicate our assets. Second, we take a long-term perspective and have continuously upgraded, improved, and expanded our urban footprints with more and more mixed-use elements. Just look at how Westfield London and Westfield Stratford became key pieces of London infrastructure over the past 15 years. This is just incredible. You may remember how Stratford was before Westfield opened.
A mixed-use district had a major impact in this area, and we can say the same for Westfield London on the opposite side. I would also argue that our assets are better than traditional infrastructure on some aspects. First, we do not operate concessions with finite life, and second, we rarely have indexation or inflation caps. Mastering destination retail is, in our view, the essential ingredient to achieve effective placemaking, which then unlocks attractive mixed-use opportunities. It does not work the other way around. This infrastructure element is, by the way, not missed by public authorities, as evidenced by the 8 subways, tramways, or rail stations due to open around the property footprints by 2030. To build on something Sylvain said, this public transport solidifies the sustainable nature of these assets, and it further embeds those assets into the fabric of the city.
Finally, many of our flagship assets are located in areas that have experienced major transformations with more offices, residential, and other asset classes. A footprint has transformed as well. Look at the two pictures of our assets in Paris La Défense. The image on the left is when our asset opened in 1981, and on the right side, you can see the area today. It has totally transformed with our asset at the center of a significantly expanded urban area. Importantly, URW's destination retail activity is financially sustainable at its core. The first reason is that our rents are profitability driven. Our assets are profit centers for our tenants, and we view this as a protection and a core sustainability factor, which is different from the cost center nature of some other real estate asset classes.
Thanks to high sales density, 21% above competitors, and the ownership of 20 of the top 35 footfall assets in Europe, we offer tenants a top sales engine, which is central to retailers' drive to store strategies. Second, our assets are operationally intensive, with a diversified tenant base, which limits concentration risk and enables us to constantly improve or adjust our tenant mix. It also ensures that we can control our exposure if some tenants don't perform. And this is one of the main reasons why, over a 15-year period, our portfolio's retail rental growth has meaningfully outpaced other asset classes, including prime office rental growth across Europe. I will also mention that this performance has been achieved despite the major temporary stop brought on by COVID, obviously.
Another key driver of our sustainable outperformance is the fact that we are long-term owners of our assets, on average 18 years and counting. We continuously improve and invest in our properties. 79% of our portfolio has been built, extended, or refurbished in the last 10 years. Fabrice will provide you with further detail after this, but this is one of the key reasons why we are looking at a very contained future top-up investment to implement a Better Places roadmap. This extra investment accounts for only 0.5% of our portfolio value in total over the 7 years. I can certainly tell you this is a very limited amount versus other real estate asset classes, and a major differentiator for us and for URW in the real estate industry.
Furthermore, our scale, expertise, and long-term ownership horizon makes us a preferred partner for cities on ambitious urban regeneration projects. One great example of this is Hamburg Überseequartier. HafenCity is Europe's largest inner-city urban development project of the past two decades. Hamburg is one of the richest cities in Europe, and we are delivering a stunning piece of infrastructure there, in line with what we have done several times over in Paris, in London, and in other major European cities. The following pictures illustrate very well what we can bring there. The key missing piece that will bring life to this fantastic new district. We're bringing a bit of everything, 95,000 square meters of destination retail space, 77,000 square meters of hotel and office space, and 579 new homes. On the slide, you can also see some of the great tenants we have already secured.
URW's core sustainability also comes from the economic and social impact our urban infrastructures bring to the cities we partner with. Our assets generate a substantial tax base and meet the essential needs of local communities. They also provide important social impact through job creation and social mobility, as exposed by Sylvain. And given the scale of our assets, we can have an immediate and meaningful impact on the local communities we operate in. I strongly believe that pushing further on that front will only strengthen our position and our partnership with cities. Now it's time to move to the final section about the opportunities in the future, and I want to look ahead at some of the many opportunities we see in our portfolio and in the market for the years to come. These fall into three broad categories. First, densification, second, retrofit, and third, urban regeneration.
In many desirable urban areas, where it is and it will be increasingly difficult to carry out new developments, we believe our dense and connected footprints may benefit from future densification rights. We think this may be a good answer to the strong demographic pool in our markets and the right thing to do to capitalize on major existing infrastructure investments that already do work. Our far-ranging ESG commitments and actions at a local level will also, without a doubt, help us solidify a position of preferred partner of cities. We also see exciting new opportunities from the retrofit of obsolete office assets. As I said earlier, we expect non-prime office market valuations to adjust downwards over the next 24 months in response to higher interest rates and ESG market trends....
Our deep European coverage, the quality of our teams, and a strong ESG development DNA, puts us in a very exciting position to seize retrofit opportunities in that landscape. This is also the reason why we are so strongly committed to our deleveraging plan, because we want to ensure we have the financial strength and the flexibility to capitalize on these many opportunities to come. I would also like to use this opportunity to just say a few quick words on our Lightwell project in Paris La Défense, because it is another very strong example of URW's know-how in the retrofit field. We created a compelling product from an obsolete building, which was vacated by its long-time tenant in 2019. We managed to decrease energy consumption by 51%, and will achieve HQE Exceptional and BREEAM Excellent labels.
We pre-let 80% of this asset two years before delivery in a very tough leasing environment. Once again, the right product, despite the environment. Taking into account the full retrofit cycle and resulting vacancy over that period, our investment in this asset has generated a 9% unlevered IRR since 1999, which is a very, very long period of time. Again, an amazing performance from the teams. Finally, our urban regeneration expertise and status of preferred partner to cities will also generate new investment opportunity for the group. What better example of the kind of value we can deliver through urban regeneration than Westfield Stratford City in London? I cannot talk about this topic without obviously mentioning Croydon. As you know, it is still very early days.
We have just secured full control of the site, which substantially increases our optionality, and we may have there the opportunity to replicate the kind of success we enjoyed at Westfield Stratford City. To conclude, through COVID, and with a truly impressive operational recovery, URW has demonstrated its absolute economic sustainability during the mother of all stress tests. We operate a unique portfolio of urban infrastructure assets, which will continue to flourish, and we have the know-how, the expertise, and the right product to navigate this complex environment. So we are truly motivated to build on such incredible quality and resilience for the years to come in a market environment which will inevitably provide attractive new investment opportunities, all this once our deleveraging objective will have been achieved. I'll now hand it over to Fabrice, who will cover how we finance our Better Places plan.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Vincent, and good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, you've heard from my colleagues about our improved decarbonization commitments, our sustainability initiatives, as well as our longer-term opportunities. My focus now is to share the financing plan of our Better Places roadmap. There are three main points that I would like you to take away. First, only limited CapEx is required to finance URW's net zero transition. This is due to our high-quality portfolio, our best-in-class operating management expertise, and the investment we've already made. Second, our Better Places roadmap creates a range of opportunities that will help us meet our sustainability objectives and generate a return on investment. Third, thanks to our strong financing track record and the sustainability characteristics of our portfolio, we are well positioned to access the growing ESG debt market, unlocking further liquidity at a green premium.
So let's get started with our portfolio of high-quality retail assets. Today, and as indicated by Jean-Marie, the focus is on our European retail portfolio, which represents 76% of the group shopping centers GMV. Our European portfolio, which attracts 700 million visits per year, is very efficient in terms of carbon emissions per visit. The well-connected nature of these assets means that almost 50% of visitors use sustainable transport to reach our centers, well above the peer average of 25%. Sustainable connectivity will improve further with new public transport infrastructure under construction. This includes eight subways, tramways, or rail stations, as mentioned by Vincent, in particular, those set to open in 2024 at Westfield Rosny 2, Westfield Hamburg, and Fisketorvet. This is important, as two-thirds of our total carbon emission on Scopes 1, 2, and 3 come from customer transportation.
As you know, we are a city player operating in very dense and wealthy catchment areas. 100% of our Westfield branded assets have a catchment area in excess of 2 million. 87% of our European retail portfolio are located in top 40 European cities, with a GDP per capita close to 60% above national average. These characteristics are very attractive for our retailers. Performance is the foundation of sustainability. Our ability to combine high footfall and sales levels with strong sustainability performance enhances URW's status as preferred partner to retailers. Retailers have become more selective as they focus and extend their presence in the most efficient stores at the expense of smaller ones, as described in our full year results.
In this context, thanks to our well-connected locations with dense and wealthy population, retailers achieve a higher sales intensity in our centers compared to the market. As a consequence, they have consistently expanded their presence with us. And as they also develop their omni-channel model, they promote a drive-to-store strategy, pushing customers to the prime stores to collect or return products bought online. This enhances further the profitability of the stores in our centers, as described in our latest results and last investor day. And this drive-to-store strategy is also consistent with the increasing interest and use of click and collect by customers. Our ability to support retailer sustainability ambitions and showcase their sustainability efforts, as presented by Anne-Sophie, is another way we are providing value for retailers. Looking now at our portfolio quality in terms of sustainability, our assets have very strong credentials.
94% of our European retail assets are BREEAM In-Use certified. More importantly, 85% of them are excellent or outstanding, versus 28% on average for the European retail sector. The quality of URW's assets in terms of carbon emissions is also acknowledged by our experts, our appraisers, who consider that almost three-quarters of our assets are rated good or better in their ESG asset assessment, based on a four-scale rating. The quality of our assets is supported by the fact that circa 80% of our portfolio was built, renovated, or extended in the last 10 years through enhancement CapEx. We took advantage of this enhancement CapEx to upgrade technical equipment to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. In addition to enhancement CapEx, we have consistently and efficiently invested in our standing portfolio over time through maintenance CapEx.
On average, maintenance CapEx has been around EUR 90 million per year since 2015. This represents an investment of 0.2%-0.3% of our retail portfolio GMV per year. Approximately 30% of our annual maintenance CapEx was linked to our carbon emission reduction efforts, around EUR 27 million per year. This is a key driver of the ESG standards of our assets and of the progress we've achieved in terms of carbon emission reduction since 2015. Thanks to these efforts and our operating expertise, we have reduced our energy intensity by 20% since 2019 in Europe. This reduction helped us to keep our 2022 total service charges below 2019, despite an 8% inflation and an increase in energy cost of 13%.
So let me give you now an example of how we deploy our maintenance CapEx on an asset and the impact it can generate, both environmental and financial. At Westfield Les Quatre Temps, maintenance CapEx was spent on lighting, cooling, and heating, as well as upgraded building management system. LED lighting reduces energy consumption by half compared to regular bulbs. Improving the cooling and heating systems also generates savings of around 50%. Our upgraded building management system allows us to control and optimize energy consumption. The total investment on these projects at Les Quatre Temps amounts to EUR 4.2 million and generates savings of more than EUR 800,000 per year in energy and maintenance cost. These savings benefit retailers through a reduction in service charges. It also generated a 40% reduction in total energy consumption in 2022 compared to 2019.
As part of our Better Places roadmap, and as achieved successfully at Les Quatre Temps, we have rolled out LED lighting in all our centers and will progressively roll out new cooling, heating, and building management systems across our portfolio as existing equipment becomes obsolete. Let's look now more closely at our path to carbon neutrality. As Sylvain has outlined, this path includes three dimensions: reduce our carbon emissions, avoid carbon emissions within our value chain, and remove remaining residual emissions. Our target assumes that we reduce our energy consumption and move away from fossil energy to green electricity. We already rely 100% on green electricity today, which supported our carbon emission reduction to date. This path will allow URW to future-proof its portfolio and meet its current obligations under European and local regulations relating to PV panels, EV chargers, taxonomy, or energy consumption.
Each dimension will also provide us with new opportunities, and I will give some more detail on these and what these represent in financial terms. We'll also have opportunities to acquire obsolete assets, retrofit them, and invest in urban regeneration projects, as described by Vincent, building on our strong track record and expertise. Last, and as mentioned by Sylvain, we'll invest EUR 5 million to protect and restore nature at scale, while neutralizing our residual emissions at attractive and fixed conditions. Moving now to the CapEx required to reduce our carbon emissions. To reach 90% carbon emission reduction in Scopes 1 and 2, and 50% in Scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 2030, we have set targets in three areas: operations, transport, and construction.
On operations for Scopes 1 and 2, we have already made significant progress in reducing our carbon emissions by 71% at group level since 2015. This was mainly achieved thanks to the full switch to green electricity, as well as the investment made so far and our best-in-class operating management. To achieve our target, we expect to spend an additional EUR 28 million per year for the full European retail portfolio on top of our existing maintenance CapEx plans. Critically, this investment will also generate significant financial savings, and I will provide more detail on these in the next slide. CapEx needed to be met, and in particular, for our carbon, reduction emissions for offices, are part of redevelopment projects, so no further maintenance CapEx is expected thanks to this investment and in view of our capital recycling strategy for offices.
And on transport, the improvement will be mainly driven by market evolution, but we will support it by increasing the proportion of EV chargers in our car parks. Last, on construction, the 35% improvement in terms of carbon emissions per square meter on new project is expected to be achieved at a limited cost that can be supported by the high quality of the product that we will deliver. So let's go now into carbon emission reduction from operations in more detail. The first level can be achieved with no CapEx and includes all our operating efforts relating to energy savings, such as adjusting the temperature in our malls or reducing functioning hours for lifts and escalators, and this will be delivered with no impact on customer experience.
The second level is the improvement of our energy efficiency, including LED lighting, heating and cooling, and the building management system, as illustrated by Les Quatre Temps case study, but also the replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps or improved building insulation. For this, the estimated CapEx amount to be invested over the next seven years is EUR 20 million per year on top of the regular ESG-related maintenance CapEx plans of circa EUR 27 million per year, which I've mentioned earlier. This amount derives from a very detailed analysis for each center, based on the existing performance of these assets and identified areas of improvement in order to meet our targets.
These investments, together with operating excellence, will generate service charges savings of circa EUR 23 million per year from 2030, when all these investments are effective, reducing the occupancy cost for retailers, as illustrated in Les Quatre Temps case study. The third level, on top of energy savings and energy efficiency, are projects improving our energy mix, mainly relating to PV panels for an estimated amount of EUR 8 million per year. So let me give you now some more details on how we are planning these PV panels deployment. First, they will both improve our energy mix and generate further savings. You've heard about our 2030 objectives, including 50 MW peak of installed capacity. This will allow the production of 55 GWh per year, covering the equivalent of 30% of the electricity needs for the common areas of our centers.
We have already spent and invested EUR 10 million in PV panels, mainly in Spain and Austria, for a capacity of circa 6 MW peak. Reaching our 2030 target will require EUR 55 million of additional investment, around EUR 8 million per year on average, on identified projects. These investments are expected to generate savings of EUR 6 million per year from 2030, once we have reached full capacity, corresponding to a return on investment in excess of 8%... and this will also cover our regulatory obligations in terms of PV panels deployments, and will reduce URW's exposure to electricity market conditions. In terms of carbon emissions from visitors and from transport, we benefit from the already strong connectivity of our assets, and this will further improve as new public transport is developed, as already highlighted.
Sylvain has explained to you our expectations on carbon emission reduction from transport, and we will support this evolution with the planned deployment of EV chargers in our assets, which will reduce the emissions intensity per visit. We can also monetize this trend by installing more EV chargers across our portfolio. Our initial rollout plan is to increase the number of EV chargers from 1,000 installed today to more than 4,000, including fast-charging places. This will represent circa 3% of our total parking capacity. URW has identified the ability to execute on this plan at no investment cost, and with this leasing model, we would rent our car spaces to operators and generate additional rents, estimated at EUR 8 million per year, based on interest already received.
We continue to explore other options at a high return and additional deployments as the electrification of the fleet develops. Another growth opportunity is the sustainable retrofit of projects. I want to look at Westfield Mall of the Netherlands, where we held our investor day last year. This project was a retrofit of an obsolete shopping center and a great example of our know-how in this area. We delivered excellence in terms of sustainable construction, with 80% of all material being recycled, resulting in a BREEAM Excellent renovation certification. We delivered high sustainability standards in operations with an excellent BREEAM In-Use certification and an AAA EPC rating. We drove strong operating and financial performance, increasing footfall, occupancy, and rents, resulting in attractive returns. URW's ability to blend sustainability, operational, and financial performance from its portfolio will generate opportunities for the group to invest in obsolete assets.
So now, to finance this transition, we'll continue to rely on green and sustainability-linked financing. This source of financing is expanding both for bond and bank markets, with ESG topics becoming more and more key for lenders. Green bond markets represented 2% of bond issuance in 2014, rising to 13% today, and we have a strong track record of accessing these markets. We're the first real estate company to issue green bonds in 2014 on the euro market, and the first one to put in place a sustainability-linked credit facility in 2017. URW's green financing has expanded from EUR 1.4 billion in 2014 to EUR 7.2 billion to date, representing circa 20% of our debt and credit facilities.
We will continue to benefit from these growing debt markets as we have updated our green financing framework last year, in line with the most demanding standards in the market. The refinancing of Westfield Centro in Germany is a recent illustration of URW's access to sustainability in financing. We raised EUR 700 million, one of the largest single asset mortgage loans in Europe in 2022, and the sustainability components of this loan allowed us to attract a strong lender's appetite and get an attractive spread of 160 basis points over a seven-year maturity, benefiting from a green premium. In conclusion, URW is well positioned to benefit from the environmental transition, thanks to our Better Places roadmap. We have among the best assets for our customers, providing a complete, diverse, and curated offer in a single and well-connected location.
We are among the best partners for retailers, providing assets located in wealthy and dense catchment areas , supporting high sales intensity and higher profitability. We are confident that these are among the best assets for investors, with a portfolio that carries no risk of obsolescence, limited CapEx to meet our decarbonization targets, and will benefit from the scarcity of new retail supply, with regulations limiting the artificialization of soil. Combined with URW's know-how in operations and development retrofit, we are confident in our ability to create new opportunities and new areas of growth. I appreciate you joining us here today, and I will now hand back to Jean-Marie for some closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Fabrice. I hope all of you have appreciated the depth and detail of today's presentations. This has been long, but we are almost at the end, and we will then be able to go for the Q&A session, which I guess will be also intense. I want to wrap up first by acknowledging the work of our teams. We have done an incredible job putting the evolution of our Better Places strategy together. You have seen we have a lot of passion and drive for this plan, and I'm excited to lead a company with such incredible momentum and commitment. Better Places is driving our business forward. It builds on our historical performance and establishes ambitious science-based targets, which have already been approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative, and are aligned with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific consensus.
It fully aligns with the strategy we presented at our Investor Day in 2022, to strengthen our core business, build new revenue platforms, and maximize the value of our assets. And it positions URW to unlock new opportunities in the future. I'm sure you will agree that it is robust, comprehensive, and credible. Again, thank you for joining us today, and I want now to introduce Meriem Delfi, our Group Director of Investor Relations and Treasury, who will help us moderate the Q&A. Meriem?
Thanks, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Meriem Delfi, and as Jean-Marie mentioned, I'm URW's Director of Investor Relations and Treasury. It's now time for the Q&A. The management board are here to answer your questions relating to today's sustainability roadmap presentation. As a reminder, we will issue our Q3 trading update on 26th October, so we cannot answer questions on current operational performance at this time. We will be taking questions from the room here in Paris and from the call line. If you're in the room, please wait for a microphone before speaking, so that our online participants can hear your question. For those on the line, operator, can you please remind participants how to ask questions?
Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and One on their touch tone telephone. From the telephone, it's Star and One.
Thank you, operator. For all questions, please state your name and company, and limit your question to only two parts. Let's start with questions here in the room. Yes, please, Florent.
Hello. Yes, Florent Laroche-Joubert from ODDO BHF. So thank you very much for this presentation. So I would have two questions. I think you have spoken a lot of Europe here in the presentation, so maybe could we say maybe a few words on what are your initiative in the U.S., even if we know that your intention is to sell or to reduce radically your financial exposure there? And maybe the second question, so linked maybe to the investment plan. So you have said in this presentation that you have the right products in terms of real estate.
So, is it possible, maybe, to make the link from an ESG standpoint with your visibility in your disposal plan, maybe in Europe, for example? Thanks for that.
So on the U.S., as I said, during at the beginning of my presentation, first, our net zero targets includes the U.S.. When it comes to the U.S., you know what is the path forward for us. It's to reduce radically our financial exposure to the U.S.. The U.S. represents today 17% of our carbon emissions, based on 2022 figures. And obviously, as we reduce our exposure, the carbon emissions will fall significantly. Nevertheless, our assets in the U.S. have a carbon action plan, which, like for the European assets, rely first on reducing consumption, energy intensity. That's the plan. And they will reduce this within, you know, creating, you know, savings on the oper...
On the OpEx, sorry, meaning that this will be covered, you know, the required investment would be covered by the CapEx, the maintenance CapEx of these assets, and are covered in terms of revenues. In the CAM revenues, which are the common part revenues that we generate, you know, in the U.S., we have the MGR or the rent, and then you have the CAM revenue. So these savings will somehow, you know, be part of the CAM revenues and the margin we do on the CAM revenues. That's for the U.S. Plus the solar panel, I should say, I should add the solar panel and the renewable energy, where, like in Europe, we can implement, and I said as well that we had the...
We can, you know, increase by almost 100 GWh the production on site of our assets, mainly, in California. And that with part, you know, of our strategy to unlock the capability to implement this power generation through solar solar panels on our assets that will have, you know, so a return on investment. So that's for the year. U.S. U.S. parts are a clear plan for the U.S. assets. The right product on the ESG, I think is d- maybe a question for-
Yeah
... for Vincent, and based on the presentation you did, Vincent.
... Sure, and the disposal plan, and the connection between the two. I feel they are very aligned because I'm convinced that we have the right product, as I tried to convey this message through my section. We believe that appetite for this kind of product will grow in the future, at a moment where the market is shifting. And we have the approach of being a long-term owner. So if I look at Europe, for instance, we have the potential and scope to discuss JVs on some of our flagship assets that we want to own forever, in which we'll continue to invest. And I think this is something that resonates a lot, even in a more constrained environment with the right type of institutional investor.
We're working on this plan. I think we have active discussions, and so we feel confident on our ability to deliver the target and the plan.
Hi, thank you very much. Markus Kulessa from Bank of America. One question, the CO2 net zero target, 2050, just to make sure the tenant consumption is included. And, follow-up on this, how much of the tenant consumption you're already monitoring? And then, if I understood well, on the carbon offset, you're starting to invest in the fund in 2030. The question is, why don't you start offsetting carbon through this kind of funds, earlier?
So, on your first question, yes, the energy consumption of our tenants is fully included in Scope 3. How much we are monitoring currently is indeed limited. We do have access to the data on the number of assets, which are used, by the way, to also build our assumptions moving forward, and it's giving us confidence in our ability to reach the target that we have set. But indeed, you're right, it's limited to a number of, I think it's between maybe 12 or 15 assets, something like this. And as to the second question on the offset, we have already made the decision to invest in Mirova, so we're making the investment today.
But these are long-term projects, so the time, it's very simple, and I'm sure you know, but maybe for the benefit of everyone. If you invest in a reforestation project, you need the forest to grow, it's as simple as that, before it can capture all the carbon that you want to capture. And it's by investing today that we will be able to achieve net zero on Scope 1 and 2 in 2030. So we are indeed becoming net zero on Scope 1 and 2 in 2030, removing 10% of the residual emissions that cannot be reduced.
Hello, all. I'm Quentin Deschamps from Crédit Agricole CIB. Thank you very much for the presentation, and congratulations for the net zero trajectory validation by the SBTi. I have two question on this front. So first on the SBTi, have you already included the real estate guidance that is under consultation in the definition of this roadmap? And I have a second question on the EU Taxonomy. Unless I'm mistaken, I did not see any guidance on EU Taxonomy line revenue by medium term. Is it something you are tracking and you are committing to?
Well, so I, I will begin maybe by the second question on taxonomy. But this is not only something that we are tracking, it's also something that we are publishing. So I, I will encourage you to, to look at our annual report, where we're obviously in full compliance with the European regulations, publishing all of our taxonomy numbers. Now, the taxonomy is still an evolving regulation that is not fully harmonized across countries. And even from our perspective, is not fully harmonized in the way this is being computed by different players within a given country. So we're working actively with regulations to ensure that progressively we come to a harmonized situation that can provide detailed and transparent and comparable information to the market.
As far as committing to a target, because it's evolving, it's difficult to commit to a target. But we're confident by, through the plan that we're putting in place, we will significantly increase our level of alignment. So that's for the taxonomy question. On the SBTi real estate latest guidance, I would have to rely on the experts, so maybe we can take this offline, but I'm confident that this is the case. We obtained the approval from the SBTi earlier this summer, and so I'm sure that we're fully in compliance.
And to complete, and one last word on the EPC rating. So we used to have 22% of rating A and B at the time when we published our figures last year. And today, thanks to the actions that we have already launched, this is reaching 52%. So you see also that the work that we are doing also allows us to improve the EPC rating of our assets. And of course, as mentioned by Sylvain, the additional CapEx that we'll be putting into our assets will allow us to improve further these EPC rating, even though, at the end of the day, we can't set any target.
Okay, so maybe we'll switch to the call line.... Okay, so if you have, do you have any additional questions? Otherwise, we'll finish this Q&A session. Thank you very much all. Oh, maybe. Sorry.
Limited questions.
Go ahead.
Yes, so Florent Laroche-Joubert from ODDO BHF. Maybe a last question. So have you already discussed these plans with ESG rating agencies? And what can we expect in terms of improvement with implementation of that plan in terms of ESG ratings? Thank you.
Well, but we're actively and regularly all year long engaging with ESG rating agencies. We have not disclosed in detail the plan, even if we're engaging with all stakeholders to make sure that the plan is indeed relevant and addresses the expectations of our stakeholders. In terms of ratings, I mean, so far we've been consistently ranked in the top quartile. So I'm sure we will further improve, but, you know, the sky is the limit after all. So, but yes, this is something that we will see in the future. Yeah. Certainly, we're expecting improvements where we can.
Any additional question in the room? Okay. So thanks, everyone, for your participation today. That's all we have for the Q&A. If you have any follow-up questions, after the event, please do not hesitate to contact me or a member of the investor relations team. As mentioned, the next key date for our diaries will be the announcement of our Q3 trading update on the twenty-sixth of October. Thank you again for your participation.
Thank you.