ESG — environmental, social, and governance concerns — has become an important set of issues for commercial real estate owners, investors, and developers. And it takes technology to gather and manage the data that is necessary, as Sudhi Sinha UL's vice president for Ecosystems and Service Development, and Lauren Alexander, an ESG program manager with UL's ESG Advisory and Assurance Team, recently told GlobeSt.com.

"ESG is largely driven by investors or your business partners," Alexander says. "It's driven by regulation and legislation as well as society as a whole. So, when we're working with our clients in real estate, they're largely concerned with what investors want to know. And investors want to know how your real estate portfolio is performing in comparison to your competitors in comparison to their other portfolios they're invested in." In addition, "we have all these local municipalities requiring you to submit benchmarking data on energy and water consumption at buildings, the SEC's proposed climate disclosures."

All of that requires having data available when it's needed and in good enough shape to adequately report and draw conclusions from.