Beike Commits to Achieving Carbon Neutrality in its Own Operations by 2030

BEIJING, Dec. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- KE Holdings Inc. ("Beike" or the "Company") (NYSE: BEKE and HKEX: 2423), a leading integrated online and offline platform for housing transactions and services, releases the "2023 Beike Carbon Neutrality Target and Action Roadmap Report" ("the Report"), reaffirming its commitment to achieving carbon neutrality in its own operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 2030.

Alongside Beike's commitment in the Report to achieving carbon neutrality in its own operations (Scope 1 and 2)^[1]  by 2030, the Company also targets value chain carbon emissions (Scope 3)^[2] intensity reductions of 60% at its headquarters and the real estate brokerage business and 30% in its home renovation and furnishing and home rental businesses, using 2022 as the base year.

Strengthening Top-level Design and Exploring Green Development Roadmap

"After comprehensively assessing the potential physical risks and transition risks climate change may pose to our business operations, we set up the Sustainable Development Department, Corporate Social Responsibility Center, Beike, in 2022, to commence strategic planning in advance and firmly grasp the strategic initiative of Beike's sustainable development and low-carbon transition," mentioned in the Report. Over the past two years, Beike has conducted two inventories focused on greenhouse gas emissions from its real estate brokerage business and overall operations respectively. Beike devised its carbon neutrality targets and action roadmap by integrating carbon inventory assessment efforts with a comprehensive approach that takes into account future business planning, low-carbon development level of the industry, existing emission reduction measures, and other relevant factors.

With respect to operational scope, Beike plans to reduce emissions by taking reduction measures in terms of improving management efficiency, optimizing energy structure, and enhancing technological innovation. Approximately 80% of Beike's operational emissions come from purchased electricity, and nearly 80% of such emissions come from electricity use in stores, making energy conservation of stores a key priority to achieve carbon neutrality in its own operations. In response, Beike has introduced an intelligent energy monitoring and control system for its stores, enabling smart analytics, diagnosis and optimization of energy usage, with an aim to reduce energy consumption and emissions per unit area. In September 2023, Beijing Lianjia ALFA Community Store obtained the LEED Gold Certification, making it the first Lianjia store to achieve this distinction, which would mark a starting point for Beike to drive the establishment of more environment-friendly stores.

With respect to the value chain, Beike will actively promote emission reductions with upstream and downstream ecological partners from the perspectives of green procurement, green supply chains, and green logistics. According to the 2022 carbon accounting results, about 55% of Beike's value chain emissions come from daily procurement, including product procurement in the process of business development and supplies procurement to support Beike's own operation; about 21% of the emissions come from the leased data center; and about 15% of emissions come from purchased large equipment, vehicles, furniture, and more.

Beike is working collaboratively with upstream and downstream partners in the home renovation product procurement process to explore lightweight and low-carbon renovation. By choosing standardized and modular materials, the company can enhance the rate of digitization and installation.

In design stage, lightweight knock-down furniture is preferred. To promote low-carbon development across the whole industry, Beike actively participates in the formulation of sustainable development standards for renovation and building materials industry. Regarding product transport, using the Beijing home renovation materials warehouse as a case study, 95% of the freight vehicles delivering from this warehouse to locations with business requests are electric vehicles.

Empowering Low-carbon Development Through Technology and Co-creating a Wonderful Home Together

A standout feature in Beike's daily operations is the integration of VR technology to support low-carbon environmental initiatives. Based on its independently developed VR hardware and software, Beike effectively improves agents' and customers' property viewing efficiency while reducing the environmental footprint for agents and customers. In 2022, there was a total of 1,508 million user views of listed properties, resulting in a reduction of over 2,789,800 tons of carbon emissions compared to traditional in-person viewing.

Beike continues to expand its paperless services across different stages of  transactions. Currently, Beike's paperless service models encompass online contract signing, online evaluation, online mortgage processing, and online notarization. Furthermore, the paperless approach has been incorporated into portions of the contract signing process and store owners' agreement signing across its home renovation and rental businesses. In 2022, over 68 million sheets of paper were saved, resulting in a reduction of approximately 593 tons of carbon emissions compared to traditional paper-based signing. Through Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems, Beike's home renovation business adopts 3D visualization to realize the comprehensive online design scheme, reducing reliance on physical design drawings.

In daily operations, Beike fully leverages its community-rooted attributes to guide community residents in participating in decarbonization practices. Since September 2020, Beike has launched three phases of the "Blue Ocean Campaign" to connect individual or collective mangroves planting with the low-carbon behaviors and low-carbon contributions of its users and employees. In June 2023, Beike became the first batch of corporate members to join the World Economic Forum's "1t.org" China Action community.

Mr. Stanley Yongdong Peng, Co-founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Beike, said, "Beike is fully committed to carbon neutrality. Addressing climate change will be one of the key issues in Beike's future work. As a technology-driven one-stop platform of residential services, we aim to drive wider carbon reduction through technology empowerment and connections with communities, and to drive the participation of users, agents, and other relevant parties through VR, AR, paperless online contract signing and other technologies to create a low-carbon future in the residential sector."