Good morning, and welcome to the Dream Group of Companies investor session for Tuesday, 05/18/2021. During this event, management may make statements containing forward looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward looking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward looking information. Additional information about these assumptions and risks and uncertainties is contained in the filings with securities regulators of Dream Unlimited Corp, Dream Office REIT, Dream Industrial REIT, and Dream Impact Trust, including each of their latest annual information forms and MD and As. These filings are also available on their respective websites.
Your host for today will be miss Jane Gavin, president of asset management for Dream Unlimited Corp. Ms. Gavin, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you all to Dream's Investor Day showcasing our impact and ESG initiatives across the entire Dream platform. We have an exciting program planned for you today. You'll hear from leaders across our businesses about how they're using impact principles to guide how we invest, build and operate. My name is Jane Gavin, and I'm President of Asset Management for Dream.
In that role, I get to have a bird's eye view of our private funds business as well as all of our public vehicles. Impact is informing how we allocate and manage our capital across the board. We've been sincerely investing this way for years, embracing environmental and social governance, but we've enhanced the theme dramatically and dynamically over the past year. In my twenty three years with the company, creating an impact framework and having old business lines making the investment in the space like you're going to see today is one of the most exciting and meaningful initiatives we've undertaken. So we have a full program for you today, so we aren't going to do a question and answer session.
But I'd encourage you to reach out to any of the speakers after at any time or Kimla Fever, And there's going to be contact information at the end of the slides. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to our Chief Responsible Officer for Dream Unlimited, Michael Cooper.
Thank you, Jane. We have a very strong management team to present to you today, and we're very excited to be able to have this presentation. Big picture, Dream has always pursued profits while also making communities better. We have managed this way for twenty five years, well before there were metrics, certifications, and frameworks. We continue to be a leader in serving our communities while pursuing all of our stakeholders' interests.
Today, are thrilled to have the opportunity to provide some insight into how we actually do contribute in tangible ways to make our communities better. While we will be speaking about many things that we are going to do to contribute to our community the best we can, we will be doing this while we pursue all of our other goals. There is so much that we are doing. To best manage your time, we're not addressing all of the great ways we are building communities in Western Canada where we manage water better, reduce carbon emissions, create unique natural green spaces, and program our entire developments and communities. Nor will be nor will we be talking today about the environmental and inclusive urban projects that we are building in Toronto for the most part.
We would be happy to speak to anyone that is interested in these activities. Please connect with us through Kimla Fever or contact me directly. As you will see, we already have a full agenda speaking about our diversity, inclusivity, and advancement team, Dream Office, Dream Industrial, Dream Impact, a Basin, a virtual fireside chat with JN Guilfoy, the CEO of Vancity, a purpose driven financial institution that's making major, major impacts in the world we live in. And we'll also end with a few words from our Vice Chair Impact, Richard Florida. We hope that today's session will provide some insights into many of the initiatives we are pursuing and also into our approach to managing the post pandemic area.
Going forward, we expect managing private businesses will require balancing even more competing interests to maximize the returns from for profit businesses while earning the social license to pursue profits through providing tangible, meaningful benefits to society at large. We've continued to concentrate our ownership of unique prize assets while developing best in class assets and businesses. We are positioned better than at any time in our history for the exciting and demanding challenges ahead. I believe that all of the Dream Enterprises are very well positioned to thrive going forward as we have a track record of success measured by the benefits to our financial stakeholders as well as our social stakeholders. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today to learn about our business.
And now I'd like to turn it over to Colleen Reid, who is co chair of our diversity, inclusiveness, and advancement team, along with Cord Wadley, the COO of Dream Office. I'm very excited about our progress within the business with the team and especially the opportunities to apply our learnings externally to create impact among our community at large. Colleen?
Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. My name is Colleen Reid, and I'm the director of technology operations and also the co leader of the diversity, inclusion, and advancement committee at Dream. Our culture here at Dream has always been one of belonging so that our people may thrive in an environment where diversity, inclusion, and advancement is really at the forefront of everything that we do. Our culture of inclusiveness and treating one another fairly are really important tools in helping us to build better communities.
So last year, we established our Diversity, Inclusion and Advancement Committee, and this committee consists of Dream Board members and employees from all levels, regions, and backgrounds. So we were initially tasked with elevating how we work internally as a company and making positive and measurable differences for our employees. But this quickly evolved and expanded into supporting the work we do within our developments and communities across the Dream Group of companies. So I'm excited to share today a little bit about the committee's goals, our progress so far, and things we're looking forward to in the future. Next slide, please.
So the goal of the committee is really based on these four pillars of listen, learn, action, and accountability. We want to listen to our community experts and employees to understand the pulse around diversity, inclusion, and equity at Dream. We also want to learn by continuously educating ourselves and each other. We want to take action by enhancing current practices and creating new programs that build a sustainable framework of success at Dream and in our communities. And finally, we want to hold ourselves accountable by measuring and tracking our goals with tangible and real data.
Next slide, please. So with our enhanced focus on impact investing, our committee has aligned our efforts around our core mission of building better communities for people to live, work, and play in. The committee's actions have been concentrated in these key areas of education, recruitment, advancement, dream difference, and community. Within education, recruitment, and advancement, our focus is really creating opportunities for understanding and growth. We believe that education is a key enabler for us understanding our differences, and we aim to foster a work environment and communities that are open, inclusive, and unbiased.
We believe that together with our people, we can make positive and lasting change. Through Community and the Dream Difference, we're focusing our efforts on really giving back and creating opportunities and impact in our communities. We have a lot of bold ideas that will generate positive social outcomes for under supported groups by taking action to provide equal access to homes and different opportunities. The Dream Difference, as we call it, is really a way to provide fair merit based opportunities to trades, contractors, and service providers from the underserved communities. Next slide, please.
So a few highlights of what we've achieved so far in such a short time is, you know, we've been able to secure important partnerships with third party organizations such as Black North Initiative and Matrix three sixty. They're assisting us in moving our diversity inclusion agenda forward by providing us with goals, timelines, and objectives, as well as access to resources to help us achieve these goals. We've also been able to provide support to many organizations that help underserved communities, like the GEM eMendership Program. We've supported them in the form of two scholarships and an intern placement this summer at Dream. We're really excited about this partnership as GEMs focuses on high school girls facing socioeconomic barriers.
We've also continued to work with Habitat for Humanity, where we've donated approximately two tons of excess materials from our construction sites to date. We've completed our diversity survey, which was a really big milestone for us, just to understand the pulse of diversity and inclusion at Dream, and where we're starting from, and of course the areas that we can improve on. Our quarterly diversity training led by Matrix three sixty, We launched this in January, and it's been a huge success. So we'll continue these sessions on a quarterly basis to help our employees better understand and act on systematic racism. Next slide, please.
So just looking forward into the rest of the year and the road ahead, here's a quick snapshot of some of the things that the committee is discussing and working towards. A couple of highlights here are our mentoring program and our next quarterly education sessions are launching over the next few weeks. We're continuing to work on expanding our supplier network by leveraging procurement spending in a way that promotes opportunities within the under represented communities. We're continuing to look at, space and donating it to some of the donating space in some of our buildings to the under represented groups just for their fundraising or other types of events. And we're continuing to cast a bigger net to find more diverse talent through referral programs, career events, and secondary education partnerships, just to name a few.
So as you can see, we've achieved many things to do so much more initiatives in the pipeline. Our committee is really excited to move forward on these different actions to improve diversity, inclusion, and advancement at Dream internally, and to project our great culture externally, meaningful impact to our developments and communities. So thank you. And with that, I'll pass it on to Jay to present the Dream Office ESG update.
Thank you, Colleen. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our presentation and thank you for joining. My name is Jay Zhang. I'm the CFO of Dream Office REIT.
I'll give you a brief overview of our company and mainly focus on the ESG and impact initiatives that we've been doing in the past, the present and also into the future. High level Dream Office REIT today is a dedicated Downtown Toronto office REIT. We have about $1,200,000,000 market cap, just concentrated in 30 buildings and 5,500,000 square feet. Today, 85% of our portfolio is exceptionally well located in Downtown Toronto. And if you're ever in the area, you can tour most of these assets in under one hour.
Our goal since 2016 has been to instill our portfolio down to a collection of very well located assets. So we really strengthened our balance sheets and now we have the resources, to invest a lot of value add capital. And we want to elevate these buildings to best in class in the city, so they remain desirable for tenants through all cycles. So even before the pandemic, we have made a couple of announcements. We said that we would invest $50,000,000 in Bay Street to improve common areas, the elevators, HVAC, air quality and lighting.
We think this is important because we want to attract the tenants into the space because they're going to be spending eight to ten hours a day, and we want them to have a great place to work. This slide, you'll note that we intend to spend additional $42,000,000 on cleaner technologies across our portfolio to achieve environmental goals. I want to emphasize that these initiatives that we laid out here are not just for this year. In fact, in 2015, we had a very similar set of goals and we achieved those targets in 2020. So now we're basically saying that we will do the same and by twenty twenty five twenty fifteen twenty twenty five, our buildings will operate more efficiently.
The operating expenses will be lower, and we can pass the savings on to the tenants and that will make our spaces much more desirable and competitive. Next slide, please. So as noted in the past, we have always done ESG initiatives because we thought it was the right thing to do. We're now starting to document a lot more of these goals. So we have the targets to hit, our teams understand what they are, they are measurable and we are accountable.
In our corporate and executive scorecards, in fact, these are the ESG goals that we need to achieve for 2021 and the success of these goals will directly impact our score and compensation. Some of these goals are listed here. I'll highlight just a few. Colleen had previously talked about our Diversity Committee and Dream Office will do its part to ensure quality and hiring practices and meritocracy and advancement opportunities across all levels. Despite COVID and its challenges, we have been making improvements in both our operations and buildings.
The BOMA BEST certifications are to showcase higher building operations and management standards that we have obtained for 22 properties. We're working on LEED certifications and that's to confirm design and building sustainability achievements for some of our larger assets such as Adelaide Place and four thirty eight University. Two points I'd to cover in a bit more detail. So next slide, please. Okay.
So continuing with the theme that we have always on impact, but now we want to measure it, in a more formal process. One of our main goals this year is to obtain a GRESB score, and we expect to do that by year end. We hired Quinham Partners to help with our process and to identify opportunities where we can make improvements. We expect our first year score to be very strong and based on consultation assessments, we expect to achieve a score that's above the Canadian peer average by the end of the year. Concurrently, we're working with these consultants to identify areas of improvement, so we can at the same time work on initiatives that will improve our score in the future years as well.
So stay tuned. Next slide, please. And lastly, this is something that we're very proud of. So there was an announcement and a press release made over a week ago. We were recognized as Canada's largest commercial portfolio to earn the well health and safety rating with 87% of our GLA that qualified.
So the idea behind this is that safety of our employees and of our tenants are of paramount importance. And especially with, employees gradually returning to work over the summer and the fall, we want to make sure that they have a safe place to return to. We did a lot of work since COVID started, such as upgrading our air filtration systems, UV robots, enhanced cleaning protocols. We then went and searched out the most rigorous and third party verifiable standards that we can achieve to certify that these buildings are safe and so our tenants are comfortable to come back to work. If you haven't checked it out yet, so Lady Gaga and J.
Lo and a host of other celebrities did a commercial and that's quite interesting, so they agree. So these are just a few highlights. We're happy to take any questions after the presentation. But in the meantime, I'll turn the call over to Alex Sanikov, Chief Operating Officer of Dream Industrial REIT.
Thank you, Jay. Good morning. I am Alex Sanekov, Chief Operating Officer for Industrial. We are a global logistics and industrial REIT with a 30,000,000 square foot portfolio located in key markets in North America and Europe. We continue to advance sustainability initiatives for Dream Industrial.
For 2021, we have an ambitious ESG framework focusing on multiple areas of the business. I'm going to touch on some of the key aspects, including our green property operations, renewable power investments, acquisitions and development, as well as our green financing framework. Next slide please. Our existing portfolio is our key area of focus. We launched a company wide initiatives we are calling green property operations.
Knowing where we stand with respect to energy consumption is key to setting up targets and driving tangible results. As many of you know, in our business tenants manage their utilities directly. As a result, we currently have limited visibility into this data. To address this, we are actively engaging with our tenants to partner on how we drive sustainability of our properties. Our goal is to start collecting data this year from our occupiers, report on our progress and start setting results start setting targets.
We're investing in sustainable landscaping to promote biodiversity and reduce overall water consumption and make our buildings more green. For our roofing projects, our main capital expenditure, we're looking to invest in white reflective roofs, driving energy efficiency and reducing overall footprint of our buildings over time. Nearly 40% of our portfolio is already powered by LED. We're looking to upgrade another 1,000,000 square feet to LED this year. And although it is less common for industrial buildings to have green certifications, all of these initiatives allow us to pursue certifications of our existing properties including BOMA, BRIEM, DGNB and LEED standards.
Next slide please. We always look ways to invest in our buildings. These investments provide us with the opportunity to generate above average risk adjusted returns, enhance our properties and make a positive impact on the communities where we operate. We are advancing our solar investments in Canada and The Netherlands with a target of over 45,000 panels covering over 2,500,000 square feet. To put this in perspective, these projects would have generation capacity enough to power over 5,000 households per year.
The overall project could add to approximately $20,000,000 in capital investment over the next couple of years and will generate mid single digit unlevered returns. And we are exploring additional opportunities across Europe and Canada to expand our renewable program. Moving to the next slide. Acquisitions and development continue to be a significant driver of growth for Dream Industrial. We have incorporated the sustainability criteria in our acquisition program and added over $250,000,000 of assets representing top 15% of the national stock by energy efficiency in the respective markets.
We're also very active in development with over 1,000,000 square feet targeted for construction commencement this year and a significant pipeline for the following years. Our goal is to develop state of the art buildings in terms of functionality and sustainability. We're generally targeting green building certifications for our development projects as well. We're actively exploring opportunities for circularity in construction, specifically for our redevelopment projects we're planning for 2022 and beyond. Moving to the next slide.
As we discussed in the previous slides, we are increasing focus on sustainability in our capital allocation decisions. With that in mind, a green financing framework is a logical step in our ESG evolution that ties together all of our work streams from the perspective of our balance sheet. We're currently finalizing a green financing framework. Our framework is built in accordance with UN sustainable development goals with a focus on acquiring and developing properties with strong sustainability credentials, investing in clean power and building upgrades that will reduce the overall footprint of our business. I will now turn the presentation over to Megan to discuss the Dream Impact update.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Alex. My name is Megan Peloso. I am the CFO of the Dream Impact Trust. For those not familiar, Dream Impact Trust is Canada's first publicly traded vehicle that's dedicated to impact investing.
The portfolio is located in core markets within Canada, specifically Toronto and Ottawa. And roughly 80% of the Trust portfolio as of March 31 was invested in a qualifying impact investment. Now our goal is to reach 100%, which we'll achieve through normal course capital recycling, and we expect to accomplish this by 2024. Next slide, please. We believe at Dream that we've accomplished a fairly significant amount within this space in a fairly short duration of time.
In October, we announced the Trust Refined Impact Strategy, and since then have been diligently building out the Dream Impact Management System, which I'll talk to in a moment. On May 3, we released Stream's inaugural impact report, and this report includes details on our impact management system, as well as it identifies major KPIs for our impact verticals and goals for 2021. And we are extremely committed to the ongoing monitoring, evaluating, and then public reporting of these KPIs and goals going forward. In addition, I'd like to mention Dream Unlimited, who is the trust asset manager and a 2026% equity owner in the trust, successfully launched a private impact fund this past March with just under 140,000,000 commitments upon first close. Next slide.
Now, the Dream Impact Management System is effectively our framework that governs how we monitor, measure, and report on impact across our investments. And as we were building this out, it was really important for us to look at existing frameworks and guidance from established bodies in this field as our overall goal or objective is really to develop a best in class system, which was incredibly thoughtful and robust. And Dream is a signatory to the operating principles for impact management. And as part of that, we were required to issue a disclosure statement, which we published on May 3. Another requirement as a signatory is to actually have your framework and processes verified by a third party.
So effectively, the Dream Impact Management System is currently being reviewed by a third party who are reputable in this field, and we expect to have that verification statement released by the end of Q2. I, by no means, can do this justice or do this system justice in the short presentation period that we do have. However, I just want to talk about some of the rigor behind our framework, and I think that can really be seen within our measurement and our pathways itself. So our impact pathways, are aligned with the UN SDGs, which my colleague, Pino, will talk to in a minute, have effectively been identified for every single qualifying asset from an impact perspective. We've defined a very detailed measurement approach, which has a scorecard for each asset, And this allows us to benchmark each impact investment against one another.
It allows us to monitor ongoing performance. And it also allows us to take a step back from an acquisition perspective to ensure that any investments we are acquiring qualify from an impact perspective. We take a step further and actually look at secondary pathways as well. And these are effectively the multiplier effect of our primary pathways. These aren't scored, but we have quite a robust amount of academic research to support the additional or the incremental benefits that we're achieving through our impact pathways.
And lastly, I think it's important to note that we also considered negative pathways, which are effectively the negative externalities or the unintended consequences of our outputs or actions as we move forward and execute on our impact plan. For more details, I would really encourage you all to look at our impact report or to reach out to myself or any of the Impact team members. We'd be happy to chat through this as we're incredibly proud of the system that we've created. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues, Gord Wadley, who's our EVP of Commercial Properties for Dream and Pino DiMaggio, who's our Head of Impact Strategy and Delivery. Pino has just recently joined us.
He was previously at Sidewalk Labs, and prior to that, he was a partner at Urban Strategies. Pino and Gord will be chatting about the impact verticals and ongoing initiatives within the impact portfolio. Pino, over to you.
Thanks, Megan. And we can flip to the next slide, please.
As you just heard, I guess, I'm the new kid on the block here. So I just joined this year as the Head of Impact Strategy and Delivery. And in doing so, I think it's really the impact vision that Dream has and the opportunity to help build a portfolio that's specifically looking at how we improve environmental and social outcomes on projects that drew me to the opportunity here. So, I'm excited to be able to talk about the actual things we're doing within that portfolio. I want to start with maybe just focusing on this broader objective that Megan mentioned around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Lots of impact investors and managers adopt these goals as a mechanism for creating metrics and thinking about what to achieve. What we've done that's fairly unique is we focused on building cities that are inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, and as a result, really focused on what's called SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities. And we've used that to build up our verticals around environmental sustainability and resilience, around attainable affordable housing, and on inclusive communities. And we think that as a real estate company, we are really well positioned to achieve a number of outcomes that specifically address these issues and this broader objective. And we're really excited to have Richard Florida as our Vice Chair of Impact.
He'll actually be speaking more broadly to this topic in a little bit. And he was really instrumental back in 2015 in getting the United Nations to adopt this goal as part of its broader SDGs. Next slide, please. So, we think through these verticals that our impact strategy is quite aligned with the broader objectives for a green and equitable recovery that we're seeing amongst investors and governments alike. And what our focus really allows us to do is focus on things like how we address climate change, how we actually deliver more affordability and more affordable housing within various projects, and how we help address social equity issues and create greater inclusivity in the communities.
And we've got a number of real estate assets and really exciting ones that we think are doing some amazing things at addressing these issues and achieving this broader objective. And those range from the Zibby project in the Ottawa Gatineau region, where we're actually delivering what is Canada's most environmentally sustainable large scale district project. In the West Dawnlands, we are delivering one of the largest mixed income projects going on in Canada right now with a very large affordable rental housing component. And right next door to that in the Canary District, we're delivering the first purpose built indigenous hub in any major North American city. And within those assets and the various other ones, there's lots of very specific impacts we can already start to point to, and that we'll continue to build on.
So, next slide, please. In terms of our first impact vertical, environmental sustainability and resiliency, There's a number of things here we're moving forward with. So, at Zibbe, we are implementing a district thermal energy system, which is going to result in net zero emissions for heating and cooling across the entire development project. And we think that's important and main way to start getting to our broader 2035 commitment around net zero carbon in our developments. Also at Zibby, we have an incredible outcome of 99% construction waste diversion, which is effectively creating a circular building construction process.
Other objectives or other outcomes at Sussex Center in Downtown Mississauga, a large office complex, we've invested $120,000,000 in sustainable improvements into that building. In the West Donlin Rentals project, where we're building 2,300 rental housing units overall, all of those will be delivered in LEED Gold buildings. And then there are broader resiliency issues related to some of the larger master planned and district scale projects we're doing. So, in the Canary District, we've combined an 18 acre park with a flood protection landform, which is providing lots of flood protection, not just for that community, but for the broader Downtown Toronto area. And in Brightwater, in the Mississauga Waterfront, we're leveraging a 72 acre mixed use waterfront community to actually undertake a very significant environmental cleanup of an oil refinery site there.
So, next slide, please. On affordable housing, we're really embracing the challenge and the need to build more affordable housing, and we're looking for opportunities to do this at scale. I won't list out each of the individual projects we're working on. You can see those up on the slide. But in total, we have over 1,000 affordable rental housing units currently under construction or in the development process itself.
Very specifically, at West Don Lands and Zibby, we've actually been able to fast track those projects and even exceed the original housing commitments that we made for those projects. Next slide, please. Inclusivity is going to be one of our growing areas of concern coming out of the pandemic as we look to deliver on meaningful social impacts. We've already been able to achieve quite a number of different outcomes there, including a fully funded education, health, and child care center as part of the indigenous hub. We've been able to integrate various IMCA community service facilities in our different projects.
And we've been able to build some very large scale parks and community services in different projects. At Zibby, we've actually got a formalized program for working with the indigenous community to actually create employment opportunities, building opportunities, business opportunities, and wealth creation opportunities throughout that project. And we're looking to expand on those different objectives. These cover a variety of our development projects and different impacts. What I'm going to do right now is hand it over to Gordon Wadley, who will talk more specifically about some of the things we're doing on the property management side.
Gordon?
Yes, that's great. Thanks, Pino. It's really great to connect with everyone today, albeit virtual. I hope you and all your families are doing really well. I'm very lucky at Dream.
I get to wear two hats. I'm the Executive Vice President of Commercial Properties. So the team that I'm a part of manages all the income producing assets across the country. And then in Dream Office, I'm the Chief Operating Officer, with pretty much the same mandate. I thought Jane said it the best at the beginning on how exciting and transformational impact an ESG is to how we do our business.
Our operations team used this past year in spite of COVID to work very hard to be leaders in sustainability, corporate and community stewardship through pioneering and leading a number of nationally recognized initiatives all in the past twelve months. On this slide here, it shows that 100% of our Canadian properties over 100,000 feet are now BOMA Best. So quick context, BOMA Best is Canada's leading sustainable building certification. It recognizes excellence in energy and environmental management and performance in commercial real estate. We also achieved this certification.
We're the first heritage community at the Distillery District that certified over 250,000 square feet with this certification. So, there's a lot of big wins on that side for our operations team this year and we're all quite proud. I thought it was interesting. Pinot touched really quick on the $120,000,000 green loan that we secured at Sussex. But operationally in 2020, a lot goes into reducing our energy and our carbon footprint.
We did a number of lead retrofits, energy metering and consumption programs. Keep in mind, this building was over 650,000 square feet and built in 1989. So it was a huge catalyst and confidence builder for our team to show that we can achieve this kind of success, and it's going to translate to a number of other buildings. As such, at Sussex, we achieved LEED Silver and BOMA Best Gold, and both were key criteria in qualifying for the loan. The last thing on this slide is keeping with the theme of firsts.
It's been in the media the past week, but we've just announced last week that we received certified gold from the Green Lease Leaders Association for the leases we use right across all the Dream Group of companies. The program is the leading national certification for leases, and it was founded by the U. S. Department of Energy a co alliance that they have with the Better Building Alliance. It very publicly showcased Dream's commitment to tenant and landlord communications and the overall transparency around recoverable expenses, energy efficiency and indoor air quality.
Next slide, please. Jay touched on GRES, but I won't spend too much time on it. But I will say it's a bit of a teaser. In 2020, we did our diagnostic score and we did quite well. So 2021, this year when we do our submission, we're expecting to be in the top percentile of managers in the country.
So stay tuned for that. We're looking forward to announcing that later in the year. We took some time and instituted some language in our tender documents for trades and contractors. And basically for everything going forward, Dream has a tremendous amount of dominion over multimillion dollars of contracts throughout the portfolio. So what we've done is we've asked our trades and contractors on the last round of submissions to provide us their diversity and inclusion policies.
And we hope that this is going to raise awareness and let the people know that work with Dream that this is something that we find very important. I won't spend too much time on the well health and safety designation, but Jay touched on it and it was a proud moment for the group where we've got 25 buildings certified and we're the largest portfolio in Canada to do it. And the last point I want to talk about that I'm really excited about and I want to share it with everybody. We're in the midst of completing Canada's first District Thermal and One Planet showroom. So this is an actual showroom.
And Pino touched on district energy. But this project, it's going to be in the base of Block 10. It's going to be a live and in person education space for our district thermal heating and cooling systems, ZCU. It's going to showcase our live working system that relies on effluent energy from the Kruger plant and cooling from the Ottawa River, and it will be located in our new vertical 162 unit res tower. Last point here, and it's a bit of a segue, but one thought I want to leave you all with is a key variable that's absolutely undeniable and what we're seeing with all our tenants and prospects is that sophisticated tenants that covet sustainability, community, environmental stewardship, see tremendous value in what we're doing operationally.
And as a result, Michael touched on it, we don't sacrifice returns. Our operational plans are accretive. And we've proved this a couple of different times, these tenants will pay more. Ultimately, they want to align their occupancy goals with landlords and developers who can demonstrate their commitment to ESG, green leases and net zero accommodations. We have the absolute best example of this in the nation's capital right now at our 34 acre, 4,000,000 square foot Zippy development.
And just to share some final real quick context here, we're finalizing 180,000 square foot Class A building for the federal government in November. I don't know if some of the people that are on the call know this, but this is the same government who in February, they announced with the Treasury Board that all new leases and RFPs for accommodations in the future will be net zero carbon. And there's no other community of scale in the country that can accommodate this to the level that Citi can, and we're very well positioned. And what I would like to say before I pass it back to Pino is I would absolutely welcome the opportunity to meet you in person, tour and share all the great things we're doing at any of our commercial site. Obviously, it's contingent on the provincial reopening framework, but in all sincerity, please reach out to me anytime after this to arrange a tour.
PowerPoints and virtual presentations are fine in the interim, but nothing beats seeing these live projects. And I'm so confident that once you see these live developments, you'll share the same excitement and passion as we all have working on them. And in turn, our clients and our prospects have on partnering on it. So please feel free to reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to walk you through any time.
And I wish you all the best. So, back to you, Pinto.
Thanks, Gord. I couldn't agree more than 100% on what you said there. I'm excited about actually getting out and looking at the various things we're doing and be more than happy to meet up with anyone along that way. In terms of looking forward, there's a lot more we know we can do and we've started to do already. Those include building out our specific net zero roadmap, which is going to detail how we're going to get to our commitment for net zero for 2035 and the various interim steps that we are taking to get us there.
We're developing a social procurement strategy, many elements of which we are already piloting and you've heard a little bit about. And that's going to highlight how we work with our supply chain to specifically create opportunities, employment and business opportunities for various equity seeking projects, groups through the various projects that we're doing. Gord touched on green leases. We're really looking at advancing the thinking that's embedded in those award winning green leasing initiatives and expanding that to a concept of impact leases, where we can work with our tenants to collaborate on environmentally and socially responsible property management practices. And finally, we want to continue to get better in all that we do around impact.
And so, we're initiating a white paper series where we're going to publish some of the research and findings on how to create impact through real estate. And we'll be initiating that very soon. So with all of that, I'm going to now turn it over to Alan Hensroth, our Chief Operating Officer for the Irapaho Basin, who'll update us on some of the initiatives we're implementing in Colorado.
You, Pino. I am Alan Hensroth, Chief Operating Officer at Arapahoe Basin, one of Colorado's oldest and most iconic ski resorts. For decades, environmental stewardship and community leadership have been at the core of our operations. Many of our staff, our board members, or active with local nonprofits. Notably, we support a Gold Pass program with other ski areas that generates a million dollars annually for the Summit Foundation, our community foundation with a focus on health and human services.
In adopted an aggressive sustainability plan with seven core goals. Some of these goals include having 100% of our electricity come from renewable sources, diverting 75% of our waste away from the landfill with recycling and composting programs, and despite still growing our business, having no net increase in water use. Next slide, please. The core goal of the entire plan is to be carbon neutral by 2025. As you can see in the graph on the right, our annual CO2 emissions over the last seven years have dropped from 4,000 metric tons to 2,500 metric tons.
Functioning like a small city, we have our own water and wastewater treatment facilities. A recent major upgrade to kitchen equipment and restroom fixtures has led to a 50% water savings. It is not only good to save water, it reduces electricity consumption at treatment plants, and it eliminates the need for future plant expansion. Two on-site solar facilities, with a third scheduled for installation this summer, have not only raised public awareness on renewable energy, but have allowed us to offset energy usage on new construction projects. Renewable Connect, a utility partnership with Xcel Energy, allows a basin to directly source nearly 20% of its total electricity from a solar array in Eastern Colorado.
We are currently negotiating for a second similar partnership to help us reach our renewable energy goal. We have a long history of sustainability at Arapahoe Basin. We are very optimistic about achieving our goal of carbon neutrality by 02/2025. That concludes the ESG and impact update portion of our event. With that, I will turn it back to Jane.
It is my pleasure now to introduce the next segment, a conversation with J. Ann Gilfoy, CEO of Vancity Community Investment Bank. VCIB is a values driven bank and a national subsidiary of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union. J. Anne is a visionary leader with more than twenty years' experience as a senior executive, focused on bringing to life BCIB's vision of financing a sustainable tomorrow.
They have a unique model of partnering exclusively with organizations driving positive social and environmental change in their communities. We're so pleased to be expanding our relationship with BCIB. So, J. Anne will be in conversation with Surin Yankee, Head of Real Estate Finance and Development for Dream. So, Surin, over to you.
Thank you very much, Jane. Good morning and welcome everyone. I hope everyone's keeping well. As Jane mentioned, my name is Serene Yanki, Head of Real Estate Finance and Development. As you have heard from my colleagues, Michael, as well as from Jane and others, impact is integrated.
It intersects throughout our company and what allows us to succeed, realize our ideas, unlock value, innovate is through partnership. Today I have the privilege to be the host of our fireside chat with Jan Kilfoy, CEO of Vancity Community Investment Bank. Jan, welcome and thank you once again for being with us for our inaugural impact update and fireside chat. It's always a pleasure seeing you.
Thanks, Herring. Nice to see you too. And I'm so inspired by the last forty five minutes of presentation of what you guys are up to. It's very impressive and demonstrating in real time that you can hold two things in the same in terms of purpose and profit. So congratulations.
Thank you very much, Jan. But I've got to afford you a lot of congratulations too. There have been so many initiatives you have recently announced that I really do need to congratulate you and your team on. But let me mention here your most recent one. Congratulations on your announcement that Vancity has joined the industry led UN convened Global Net Zero Banking Alliance as a founding signatory.
Could you please speak to Vancity's journey to becoming a pioneer and leader in this space?
Yes. Vancity certainly has been a pioneer in this space going all the way back to, you know, the 1990s and sort of really focusing on internal environmental sustainability as something that it did as an organization, making sure that, inside the operations of the credit union in British Columbia, there was always thinking around environmental sustainability. And then that just grew to being, you know, a provider of investment products that are fossil fuel free, a provider of mortgages for retail members that are clean and green, making sure that as we grew our commercial book, which is predominantly what the bank is doing, there was a that was all about green buildings and making sure that we were financing things that were driving emissions down. So it's in the DNA. So way out in front in terms of kind of what's been going on the last couple of years, for sure.
But now, really like you getting quite serious about how do we convert our book to be net zero by 02/1940. At the same time, how do we make sure we don't leave anybody behind? Because we worry about the fact that many of the people around the world that are mostly impacted by climate change are the most vulnerable. So how do we do those two things together? And I think you've just demonstrated it's entirely possible in how you're thinking about how you serve the clients and customers of your facilities.
I think it's fascinating, Jan, as to how we can all achieve it, especially when there's collaboration and there's a commitment. To your point, just with respect to partnering and making sure no one is left behind, Vancity has structured some extremely innovative financing as well as financial instruments and partnerships. For example, the Parkdale Neighborhood Land Trust under your preserve and project guarantee program, your Coke Power Green Bond, and, well, I also must include here Dreams First Impact acquisition at Claremont. What drives this innovation and collaboration?
Yeah. I think the history of the organization around being a cooperative, you know, being a democratically run financial institution, all the way through to the mindset of the people who work there, and the sense that our purpose is to serve community. So put all those things together, I think it naturally leads to, you know, the best path forward is through collaboration and really understanding what do what does business, what does community need in terms of solving the problems that we're all facing. Because, you know, as you've just gone through your presentation, they're intersecting problems, climate, affordability, diversity and inclusion, you know, economic reconciliation. All of that is all part of the systems that we've created that have caused that to happen.
So it's in our DNA. And so Parkdale Land Trust, I think the idea of a land trust is very powerful. The idea that community will own land in perpetuity, I think, is very powerful. But they're a not for profit, needed assistance, and so needed creative ways for us to come to the So we were able to kind of do that with them. And that's the way we like to think, is what is it that we can do to create those partnerships that then create success and outcomes that benefit all.
So that's kind of how we approach the types of customers that come to us. And we have the patience, I guess, on some level, and the belief that the work that we're doing isn't any higher risk than providing financing to any other entrepreneur, right? So we look at all the factors slightly differently potentially.
So really in that vein, we've seen a confluence of events in our society and economy, 2020 and 2021, really has been an inflection point. From your perspective, what do you see the role of capital to bring forth an equitable and green economy?
We have come as we put together the bank the last three or four years and really ventured out of British Columbia and into Canada, I think the whole intention of our being is to look at how you use capital differently. So I think historically, capital has gone to those that have money and not to those and to those that don't have money have had to figure it out, right? Whether they had to go to friends and family or a high or lenders that could not provide them with the terms and conditions that could make them successful, lots of things happen. So we believe that capital needs to flow to where it's needed. And so that's why creatively thinking about strategic partnerships, leveraging broad bases of capital, whether that's patient capital, less patient capital, creating new stacks of capital that allow, you know, projects to succeed is something that we definitely participate in, drive in terms of encouraging and support in terms of the types of loans that we offer and the types of investments that we provide.
So, you know, I think the idea would be success for me would be, you know, in the future that every financial institution, which is in the industry I'm in, is operating like this, making sure that nobody is getting left behind. And I think the pandemic has shown us that the physios in our society have grown. They haven't decreased, right? So, you know, there are less women who are working today because of the problems that we face around kids being at home and childcare not available. You know, we've seen the vulnerable populations be the most impacted because they could not work remotely.
They had to go to work. We've seen essential workers become so much more important in our world than maybe we considered in the past. So all of those cracks that we saw have gotten greater, not less. Climate change, as you talked about a lot, right, is deeply embedded in some of those things around migration and the pandemic itself, you know, kind of inherent in the fact that our world is changing, we need to take better care of it, and we need to stop doing a lot of the things that we're doing. So I think the pandemic has accelerated purpose, has accelerated the need to put investment into things that are going to have a return that's not just a return on financial investment, but a return on people investment.
So I think the future is brighter for organizations like you and organizations like us who already have the cultures that we have to think about these things and make them happen in real time, right? But I don't know about you, but I'm certainly seeing everything from Levi's to Tim Hortons to any time you're watching TV, every ad is about what's the impact I'm having on the world. So that's all good, right? We need to keep that driving. And we need to be out in front advocating for the changes that we believe are required.
No, definitely. I think it's like how do we transform from this moment in time as we move forward to creating the society and economy. As a leader, maybe a bit more personal question is, like, what inspires and motivates you as you lead? And what is next for Vancity Community Investment Bank?
So I you know, I think as I'm, you know, get into my more senior years in terms of being in organizations and leaving a legacy as we all start to think about, I think I'm really put here on the planet to kind of make others successful. So I do that inside our organization. I try to, anyway, and I've tried in my career to really focus on people and making sure that I'm setting the people that I work with up for success and, you know, demonstrating that you can be a leader with a vision, but you can also be a leader with a heart. And then externally, I got goosebumps when you guys talked about all the things that you do. And I just I get so excited about helping organizations be successful.
So I think that's what drives me. And then out of that, I think it's then, okay, how do you do that in a way that I can look back on it and have a great conversation with my kids and my grandkids and my neighbors the people in my community and the people in our country that really is about making the world better, like really making the world better for everybody. And so I think those are the things that drive me. Those are the things that drive my team. And I always said my success would you know, I think when we started it, we started saying we were going to be only focused on impact organizations, only focused on those that are doing something good for people and planet.
You know, there was some skepticism that we could actually achieve that. And we still have a ways to go, but I think the team has demonstrated that it can be done. You know, we've been able to look at great success stories. And so I'm inspired to keep that momentum going, and keep, you know, taking the envelope and making it an even harder thing for others to achieve so that we get more momentum in the space.
Ann, thank you. I'm inspired. Really, thank you and your team. We at Dream look forward to our continued partnership as we together see the growth of this impact movement. I wish everyone well, And that concludes the fireside chat portion of our event.
With that, I will turn it back to Jane. Thank you, Jan.
Good to see you.
Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Our next panelist really needs no introduction. We're so happy to have Richard Florida come on board as Vice Chair, Impact for Dream. In that role, he's going to help us advance our impact governance and strategy.
Richard is one of the world's leading urbanists. He's a researcher and professor working at U of T's School of Cities and the Rotman School of Management. He's a writer and a journalist with several global bestsellers, including the award winning The Rise of the Creative Class and his most recent book, The New Urban Crisis. He's the co founder of CityLab, a leading publication devoted to cities and urbanism. Richard's an entrepreneur as founder of the Creative Class Group, which works closely with companies and governments worldwide, and was an advocate at the United Nations for the UN SDG 11 Sustainable Cities.
He's a thought leader in the industry, and he provides strategic leadership to Dream on emerging real estate impact strategies, and he's helping us with our growth plans for this rapidly growing asset class. So Richard, welcome.
Thank you, Jane. And now I get to write a new chapter, thanks to you and Michael, as Vice Chair of Impact at Dream. And as we've talked about, to take, I guess, some academic ideas or ideas that I had and others had and to with dream, make them a reality. Well, we've already heard from Pino about sustainable development goal, UN Sustainable Development Goal 11. I was very lucky or fortunate.
And, as this effort for a new set of sustainable development goals occurred, I don't know, five, six years ago, that friends in the field of urbanism enlisted me. And I guess they believed I was thoughtful or had a background in this and was convincing. And actually I developed a lot of the briefing material and made the presentation along with Paris mayor Anne Hildago, the head of UN Habitat, and many others to the it was called the Social and Integration Summit of the United Nations. And I made the case there with others that that, you know, it wasn't foreclosed that the UN would create a goal for cities. Were They going to create a goal for climate and create a goal for energy and create a goal to mitigate poverty.
And the case I tried to make folks is that you can't solve any of these problems, whether they're problems of housing affordability, economic inclusion, better job creation, mitigation of poverty, energy efficiency, climate change, without putting cities front and center. And fortunately, a result, partly of my work and partly as the result of the work of many others, we got the goal. And this was kind of a culmination of three, four decades of work trying to understand why cities and urban areas are great generators of economic progress, while they're cauldrons of diversity and give new Canadians and immigrants, well, I'm an American, my grandparents who came from Southern Italy, a better way of life, but also the great challenges that they face particularly across the world, and why it was necessary to create a set of goals and a particular goal to help them. Anyway, I'm just I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world. Through my conversations with Michael and the team at Dream, we have really focused and focused my effort with Pino and Megan and Jane and many others, Jamie, to make Dream the first real estate company, and I would say, the first company in the world to adopt SGG 11 to create healthier, more inclusive, safer, and more resilient cities as its motivating goal.
Not just a motivating goal, the team has built an you heard about an incredible framework to evaluate this. Now why is that important? Because there's no way government using all the tools at its disposal, in combination with the World Bank and international institutions and great philanthropies can accomplish this on its own. It just doesn't have the leverage. So private sector leverage and private sector investment in real estate and beyond is crucial if we're going to meet this challenge of building safer, more inclusive, better, more sustainable, and resilient cities.
And and and it we have this fantastic innovation called a public private partnership, which can actually help and is helping to deliver these goals. And, you know, as JN mentioned, that would be important in any other time, but it's particularly important in this age of COVID. And as we begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, as vaccines, what an incredible effort, talk about a public private partnership, As vaccines enable us to see light at the end of the tunnel, you know, COVID creates it's not a fundamental disruptor, but it's an accelerator. It's an accelerator of many good things in our world, but it's also an accelerator of the challenges. And these challenges of inclusivity, of affordability, of creating cities for everyone where young people, visible minorities, new Canadians, working people get a shot, and and making sure that we build our cities in a more sustainable way.
Well, those become even more bigger challenges as housing becomes less affordable, as housing prices go up, as their structural obstacles. Well, anyway, I'm honored that Dream has given me the opportunity to play a small role as part of this incredible team working with you to accomplish these essential goals. But I think our objective is even bigger. I think our objective is that Dream can be a first mover and a leader in this emerging area, adopting SDG 11, creating those inclusive, healthy, safer, resilient cities. But in doing so, opening up the playing field broadly to encourage others in real estate, in investment, in finance and in other industrial sectors to be a part of this with us in driving this critical agenda for building a better future.
Thanks so much for listening to me and to others. And let me hand it back to Jane.
Jane Thank you, Richard. The real estate industry has a critical part to play in ESG and impact, and I dream we're so excited to be part of the social responsibility movement. Today, we tried to give you just a very small taste of the broad reach of what we're working on, but there's so much more. We're doing incredible things across the platform to advance initiatives around the environment, social inclusivity, and making things, as Michael likes to say, better than we found them. We encourage others to do the same.
So thank you all for participating today, for your continued support. And again, if anyone would like to hear more details or has questions, please reach out to any of us here at Dream. So thank you very much, and
have a great day.