Objectives of the service
Organisations managing building portfolios often lack consistent, asset-level information on climate exposure, energy and resource performance, carbon emissions and resilience. Current solutions tend to focus on reporting and are frequently limited to point-in-time assessments, making it difficult to compare assets, quantify financial impacts and prioritise investment. Users need to move beyond identifying where physical hazards may cause damage, downtime or business interruption: they need to understand which transition and resilience measures can reduce operational costs, risks and emissions, and how much to budget for them.
OWLplaces provides a Digital Climate Passport for each asset, combined with an aggregated portfolio view. The service integrates property documents, operational data, satellite Earth observation, climate projections and geospatial artificial intelligence to assess physical and transition risks, identify inefficiencies and quantify their operational and financial implications.
Each recommended measure includes estimated capital expenditure, operational savings, risk reduction and return on investment. Clients can then connect with nearby suppliers to obtain budgets and implement climate adaptation and mitigation measures. This streamlines a fragmented, costly workflow that would normally take months and creates significant barriers to achieving climate resilience and sustainability in real estate.
The Digital Climate Passport is continuously updated as asset data, portfolio requirements and external climate conditions change, supporting ongoing monitoring, budgeting and investment decisions.
Users and their needs
The solution targets organisations managing large portfolios of physical assets, including retailers, real estate owners, asset managers and operators, initially covering more than 400 assets in Portugal and Spain.
Requirements were developed with Sonae MC, part of Sonae, Portugal’s largest retail group, providing a real-world environment Pilot with 36 assets, including hypermarkets, supermarkets, proximity stores, logistics and industrial facilities. Sustainability, energy, facilities and asset management teams contributed to defining the service requirements.
Key user needs:
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Cluster and prioritise assets by typology and risk;
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Assess and compare physical and transition risks across portfolios;
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Translate climate-risk diagnosis into actionable adaptation and decarbonisation measures;
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Quantify CAPEX, operational savings, risk reduction and return on investment;
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Prioritise investments across hundreds of assets;
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Reduce the time and expertise required to exchange verified data and produce actionable plans.
The key challenge is delivering additional value to a digitally mature organisation already using sensors and advanced energy and sustainability practices aligned with SBTi. OWLplaces must identify potential blind spots in physical climate risk and transition risks arising from the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, emerging technologies, market trends and reputational factors, while remaining scalable across different assets and data availability.
Target countries: Portugal and Spain.
Service/ system concept
Through a low-integration workflow, customers submit available property documents or portfolio data. OWLplaces creates the Digital Climate Passports and delivers climate risk assessments together with prioritised Climate Transition and Sustainability Plans. OWLplaces includes the Climate Risk Reporting, but goes beyond achieving actionable prescriptions, supported by licensed architects and environmental engineers.
The solution provides customers with decision-ready diagnoses and recommendations in days rather than months. Clients can start with minimal data: an energy utility bill can provide the asset location and basic operational information needed to initiate physical risk analysis, identify tailored climate adaptation measures, and establish a baseline for transition risk, energy efficiency and decarbonisation measures.
Space Added Value
The Digital Climate Passport relies extensively on space-based Earth Observation and climate data. In particular, data and services from Copernicus, the Sentinel missions and Destination Earth (DestinE) enable OWLplaces to complement climate projections associated with IPCC scenarios with higher-resolution observational, environmental and geospatial information, providing more granular climate-risk assessments at asset and portfolio level.
These space assets support the assessment of physical hazards including heat, flooding, wildfire and drought, providing geographically consistent information on observed environmental conditions and their evolution over time.
The added value comes from combining space-derived information with climate projections, building documents, operational data and geospatial artificial intelligence. While conventional approaches and existing competitors often rely on static hazard maps, climate models or point-in-time assessments, OWLplaces connects hazard, exposure and asset vulnerability within a continuously updated Digital Climate Passport.
This combination improves the spatial and temporal granularity of risk assessments and enables risks to be translated into asset-specific adaptation and resilience measures. Space assets also make the approach scalable, allowing hundreds of geographically distributed assets to be assessed consistently, reducing dependence on costly on-site surveys while supporting continuous portfolio monitoring.
Current Status
The Digital Climate Passport and Climate Transition Planning platform is fully operational. The solution has been tested on real building portfolios, with Sonae MC as Champion Client, covering retail and logistics assets and validating the workflow from climate-risk assessment to prioritised adaptation, energy-efficiency and decarbonisation measures.
The platform currently generates asset- and portfolio-level climate risk assessments, transition plans, CAPEX estimates, OPEX savings and return-on-investment scenarios.
Commercial and pilot agreements are now being negotiated with several private and public organisations. These include Sonae MC, with discussions focused on expanding the current collaboration; PRIO, with potential expansion to DISA Group in Spain and Damm; and Amadora Municipality and Civil Protection, for which a funding application is being prepared for a demonstrator covering municipal assets and climate-resilience planning.
Next activities focus on converting these pilot engagements into recurring subscriptions, expanding portfolio coverage and validating continuous monitoring and implementation workflows.
Prime Contractor(s)
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