Kim Pexton, Vice President of Sustainability at JBG Smith

With over 30 years of experience in sustainability in the building and real estate space, Kim has been a pioneer of implementing sustainable practices before “ESG” even existed. As the VP of Sustainability, Kim is instrumental in building out the sustainability program and strategy at JBG Smith.

Watch the video below to learn more about how how spending her childhood camping outside with her family sparked her passion for conserving nature and led her to finding a career focused on sustainability.

What led you to pursuing a career in sustainability?

It wasn’t a straight and narrow path by any stretch of the imagination.  When I started my career, there were no formal positions of sustainability leaders within construction or the real estate space.  I was blessed with an amazing opportunity early in my career to create a sustainability position and develop sustainability programming back in 1999. In hindsight, what I was doing at the time was paving the way for others to find this unique opportunity and rewarding career in sustainability. 

Why I ended up in sustainability is deeply rooted in the outdoors. My earliest and fondest memories of my family vacations growing up were camping. My happy place is really anywhere outside; we camp, we hike, we flyfish, we are members of The Izaak Walton League of America, a conservation-based organization. My “why” is very conservation based.  The beauty and awe of nature has always been a regenerative thing for me. 

How did that lead you to JBG Smith? 

I’ve worked my entire career to help integrate sustainability across various stops in the real estate value chain. I started off in residential property management in the leasing space and then moved into construction and then into design, and now this last stop is in the ownership of real estate space which encompasses transacting, managing and developing. It was a natural fit for me and a culmination of an almost 30 year career in the building space. 

What is your current role at JBG Smith and what does your day to day look like?

I lead the sustainability effort for JBG Smith, where I am working to integrate sustainability across all of our business units. Sustainability has become an ever-growing umbrella of environmental, social and governance. The sustainability component has always been grounded in the environmental aspect, and that is my main area of expertise. 

Can you break down JBG Smith’s portfolio for us?

We have a total of 64 assets, and we are considered a diversified portfolio. Our portfolio consists of a blend of commercial office, multi-family and a little smidge of retail. 

JBG Smith has committed to having a carbon neutral portfolio, can you walk us through what your strategy looks like to achieve that?

Carbon neutrality is just one stop along the path to ultimately achieve net-zero. We define carbon neutrality as: carbon neutral across scope 1 and scope 2 that is associated with the energy for operation of our buildings. 

The unique element for JBG Smith is that in the Washington D.C. metro area, our office buildings are not triple net leased, so our tenants are actually a part of our carbon neutrality, it is not just limited to common areas. 

When it comes to achieving our carbon neutrality, the very first thing that we are going to be focused on across our portfolio is reducing energy and water consumption. We have analyzed our entire portfolio and identified what we can do with respect to our reduction of energy and water consumption. We have used this data to build all of the capital expenditures into our business plans for each and every asset.

We set a target of a 25% reduction of energy consumption across our entire portfolio that is based on the analysis that we did in 2020. Ultimately, we know that there is a gap between what our assets can actually achieve and achieving that net-zero carbon objective. To help close that gap, we purchased carbon offsets for scope 1 and renewable energy credits for scope 2. 

We will continue to build out our renewable energy strategy and actually procure renewables to reduce our reliance on renewable energy credits to maintain carbon neutrality. Our major areas of focus are on reducing energy and water consumption, increasing on-site solar–which we are doing across our portfolio where it is feasible and impactful– and lastly, looking at off-site solar and other renewable energy technology. 

Is there any proptech that you are currently using to help you achieve your carbon neutrality goals? 

I wish there was. We have not found a silver bullet when it comes to proptech. The ideal proptech for us would be full automation of the collection of the enormous amounts of data that we collect annually to report on our energy usage and carbon emissions. 

Currently, we use Energy Star Portfolio Manager as the aggregator of all of that data, but the data that ends up in Energy Star is entered manually, it is not automated.  We are actively reviewing various proptech that is out there that will help us because the SEC has recently put out various climate change related objectives and amendments for 10K filings. 

How does retrofitting fit into your approach for achieving your sustainability goals?

At a certain point, each asset comes to a place where the current technology and equipment within the building is likely obsolete or is as efficient as it will ever get. As we look at various plans and the analysis we did across our portfolio, we built various energy related projects into the plans for each asset. I would consider some of those retrofitting because we are improving the mechanical equipment, replacing lights, and things of that nature. 

Can you tell me about any sustainability initiative that you’ve implemented that you are most proud of?

I have a couple of things that I am really excited about. The first one being that we are kicking off our pilot program for bringing green power to our residents in our multi-family properties. It is a unique partnership with Conservice and Arcadia. They have worked with others in the space to bring green power to residents at a discount. They have made it easy for residents to sign up for the program and see the savings on their utility bills. It seems too good to be true, but it actually is true. 

The other thing that I am really excited about is the programming that we are deploying at scale addressing waste. Waste in the past several years has been trending in the wrong direction and some of that has to do with local jurisdiction. While we can’t control that, there are things that we can control such as waste avoidance and composting. We have a partnership with an organization called The Rounds that we have deployed across all of our multi-family properties to avoid packaging waste. When it comes to composting, organics is a very large percentage of our waste stream, so the more that we can deploy composting in the office multi-family, and retail portfolio will really help impact our numbers from a waste perspective and help reverse the trajectory that we’ve been seeing. We have partnered with Compost Crew to provide all the tools necessary to successfully compost across our portfolio and they have excellent reporting on how we are impacting our waste diversion. 

What advice can you give to anybody that is looking to start a career in sustainability?

You can find a lot of people who are passionate about sustainability, but you really need to apply that to something. For me, I am passionate about sustainability but I am also passionate about buildings, and that pairing is really important to understand what it is about sustainability, and how you can weave that into what you are actually interested in from a career perspective.