Why Paris Is the Perfect European Launchpad for Greycoat’s ‘Brown-to-Green’ Strategy

When Nick Millican’s Greycoat Real Estate opened its Paris office in March 2025, the move represented more than geographic expansion. It signalled confidence that the ‘brown to green’ refurbishment strategy Greycoat has refined in London over the past decade can scale across European markets—and that Paris offers the ideal proving ground.

The timing is strategic. Paris has just adopted Europe’s most ambitious bioclimatic planning regulations. The Décret Tertiaire is forcing building owners to cut energy consumption 60% by 2050. And across the Île-de-France region, 57% of 56 million square meters of office space fails current environmental standards. For a developer whose entire model centres on transforming underperforming buildings into sustainable, premium workspaces, the opportunity is substantial.

The Carbon Logic Behind Refurbishment

Millican’s philosophy is straightforward: the most sustainable building is usually the one that already exists. “It’s extremely hard to demolish a building and then use what you’ve taken to then build a new building,” he explains. “It’s not really practical. So the more you can retain, the better the carbon footprint of what you’re doing.”

This isn’t merely environmental idealism—it’s sound investment logic. The construction industry accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions when factoring in both operational energy use and the embodied carbon locked into materials. Every foundation poured, steel beam erected, and concrete slab laid carries emissions that demolition renders wasted. Retrofitting an existing building emits 50-75% less carbon than constructing a new one of equivalent size.

In London, this approach has delivered results. Greycoat’s 20 Finsbury Dials project—a 140,000 square foot refurbishment undertaken with Goldman Sachs Asset Management—targets BREEAM Outstanding, EPC A, and WELL Platinum certifications. The firm’s own headquarters at Suffolk St James’s achieved EPC A and BREEAM Excellent upon completion in 2023.

Why Paris, Why Now

“Paris offers the same fundamentals that made London fertile ground for Greycoat’s approach,” Nick Millican notes: “significant aging office stock, institutional capital flows, tightening environmental regulations, and strong tenant demand for high-quality, sustainable space.”

The numbers support this assessment. Some 66% of Paris office stock is over 20 years old, with many La Défense towers dating from 1970s-1990s construction. Only 43% of the region’s office space meets current environmental standards. Buildings rated F or G under France’s DPE energy performance system face progressive rental bans—G-rated properties from January 2025, F-rated from 2028.

The market has already bifurcated. Paris CBD vacancy sits at 2-4.7%, while La Défense registers 15-15.7% and northern suburbs reach 20%. This disparity mirrors the “two-tier market” Millican has observed in London: prime, sustainable buildings command rising rents while obsolete stock struggles.

A Regulatory Environment Built for Refurbishment

France’s regulatory framework goes further than the UK’s on several fronts. The RE2020 regulation makes France the first country with mandatory embodied carbon requirements—the UK’s equivalent Part Z remains under consultation. The Décret Tertiaire mandates 40% energy reduction by 2030, 50% by 2040, and 60% by 2050 for all commercial buildings over 1,000 square meters, with €7,500 fines per non-compliant building.

Paris’s new PLU Bioclimatique, adopted in November 2024, establishes renovation as “the new norm” and demolition as “the exception.” The 3,000-page regulatory framework recognises that 80-90% of what will constitute Paris in 2050 already exists today. Critically, works solely for energy performance improvement are explicitly excluded from the “heavy restructuring” category—deliberately avoiding penalties for ecologically virtuous renovations.

Millican has witnessed similar trends in London: “It’s becoming increasingly hard to get permission to demolish buildings… You have to really justify why you’re doing it. It is not just a case that you make a bit more money.” Paris has formalised this shift into binding policy.

Building a Team with Local Expertise

Greycoat’s Paris expansion is led by Arnaud Malbos, who joins as Senior Real Estate Partner after 17 years at CDPQ/Ivanhoé Cambridge as SVP of Investments for Europe. His track record includes major Paris projects: the DUO towers (100,000 sqm), Cœur Défense (160,000 sqm), and the Peugeot headquarters on Avenue de la Grande Armée.

In September 2025, Semih Bayar Eren joined as Directeur Général and Partner for Greycoat France, alongside a global General Counsel role. Eren brings legal expertise from Ivanhoé Cambridge, Latham & Watkins, and Sullivan & Cromwell, and was recognised in the Legal 500 GC Powerlist France 2024. Both Malbos and Eren worked together at Ivanhoé Cambridge, bringing established chemistry and shared institutional knowledge to the new venture.

The Investment Case

The sustainable buildings premium is well-documented in Paris. BREEAM certification can increase rents by up to 24.9% versus conventional buildings. Certified properties show 8% higher average occupancy. And 77% of employers report willingness to pay premiums for green-certified offices.

Analysts increasingly frame this as a “brown discount” rather than a green premium—non-compliant assets face accelerated sales at lower prices. For Greycoat, which has built its model on acquiring undervalued buildings and repositioning them to premium standards, this dynamic creates precisely the arbitrage opportunity the firm targets.

The pipeline is shifting accordingly. In London’s West End, 59% of development activity is now refurbishment—above the 32% historic average. La Défense has targeted 300,000 square meters for renovation over coming years. The market is moving, and Greycoat intends to be at the front.

Germany is identified as a potential next market. But Paris comes first—a test of whether Greycoat’s decade of London experience can translate into continental success. The fundamentals suggest it can.

The post Why Paris Is the Perfect European Launchpad for Greycoat’s ‘Brown-to-Green’ Strategy appeared first on The American Reporter.