Property Fund Portfolio — 2.1 MWp Across Six Buildings

This is a representative project profile, not a named real client. It is drawn from the patterns we see repeatedly across commercial property portfolios: the figures are illustrative, the mechanics are real, and nothing here describes an actual fund or a specific asset. We have written it this way deliberately. Honest case studies are more useful than flattering ones, and fund managers can do the arithmetic.

The portfolio problem

A diversified property fund holds a mixed estate — in this profile, two multi-let offices, two distribution warehouses, a retail park unit and a single owner-occupied headquarters building. Six assets, six different lease structures, six different rates payers, and an investment committee that wants one answer rather than six negotiations.

The pressure was not a single deadline. It was the accumulation of several. MEES is the binding constraint: it has been unlawful to let commercial property in England and Wales below EPC E since 1 April 2023, even to sitting tenants. The fund had no sub-E assets, but two were sitting at EPC D with lease events approaching, and the interim government response of 18 June 2026 proposed an EPC B minimum by 2031 for privately rented non-domestic buildings over 1,000 m², where cost-effective and subject to secondary legislation. That is a proposal, not law — but a fund holding assets for a five-to-ten-year horizon has to price the trajectory, not just the current rule. The BPF reported in October 2025 that roughly 83% of commercial buildings across seven major UK cities sit below EPC B. Sitting still is its own risk.

Alongside MEES sat the reporting burden: GRESB submissions, a CRREM decarbonisation pathway the fund was already tracking, and SFDR and TCFD disclosures that increasingly ask for actual delivered carbon reductions rather than intentions.

The programme

We did not treat this as six projects. We treated it as one standardised survey-to-switch-on programme run six times, which is the only way a rollout stays on budget and on schedule. The approach is set out in full in our portfolio rollout guide.

We prioritised by two factors: MEES risk and roof condition. The two EPC-D assets with near-term lease events went first, because that is where solar’s one-to-three-band EPC uplift does the most work and where the value is most exposed. (Solar lifts a commercial EPC typically one to three bands — it is rarely a guaranteed single-jump, and we say so on every survey.) Roof condition was the second filter: there is no sense installing a twenty-five-year asset on a roof with eight years of membrane left, so two assets were sequenced behind planned re-roofing.

Each building ran the same playbook — structural and roof survey, G99 DNO application (above roughly 50kW the grid connection is the genuine bottleneck, not the panels), Class J permitted-development prior approval where it applied, then install and commissioning. Across the six assets the programme delivered 2.1 MWp, generating around 1,995,000 kWh a year at a UK yield of roughly 950 kWh/kWp. Self-consumption was the design priority on every asset, because that is the single largest return driver — displacing grid electricity at 24–28p per kWh is worth far more than exporting at a SEG rate of 12–16p.

Funding

A fund will not deploy a single capital structure across six assets with six different lease and ownership positions, so we did not propose one. We blended three routes:

• Capex on the owner-occupied headquarters, where the fund captures 100% of the economics and the Annual Investment Allowance (£1m, permanent) gives 100% first-year tax relief on the solar spend, which is special-rate plant.
• Asset finance on three of the let assets, spreading the cost so the programme was broadly cash-neutral against the energy savings and the business-rates exemption (rooftop solar and co-located storage are 100% exempt from business rates in England to 31 March 2035).
• A roof lease on the lowest-appetite asset — a warehouse the fund expected to dispose of inside the hold period. Here we used the “sell the roof” structure: a third party funds and owns the system, the fund takes a lease income and a green-attribute uplift, and no capital leaves the fund. The trade-offs between roof lease, PPA and licence are set out in our funding and ESG guide.

On the two in-flight transactions running in parallel, we handled the s.198 fixtures election so the capital allowances position was protected on both purchase and sale rather than quietly lost in the conveyancing.

The reporting outcome

The numbers the investment committee cared about were not only the 6.4-year blended payback. They were the estate-wide EPC uplift across the prioritised assets, the movement along the fund’s CRREM pathway, and a GRESB score improvement backed by delivered kWh rather than commitments. Those feed directly into the fund’s SFDR and TCFD reporting as evidenced reductions — which is a materially stronger disclosure position than a stated target. The green premium is real but narrow in the published evidence: JLL’s BREEAM analysis (2017–21) found around +4.2% rent and +3.7% capital value per EPC band, but that work is on prime central London offices, so we never extrapolate it across a mixed regional estate. We report what is delivered and source what is not.

Illustrative quote

“We had been treating sustainability as six separate problems with six different answers. The value was in turning it into one programme with one timetable and a funding structure that matched each asset’s position — and in getting reporting we could actually put in front of investors.” — representative fund asset manager (illustrative).

If you hold a portfolio facing the same mix of MEES exposure, GRESB pressure and split ownership, the starting point is an asset-by-asset survey that ranks risk and matches funding to each building. Request a portfolio assessment and we will engineer the ownership and lease structure so the right party pays and the right party benefits.