Dan Probst
Energy and Sustainability

The session “Turning up the Heat: Energy Efficiency, Emissions and the Bottom Line” highlighted both the strengths and the challenges in our industry when it comes to advancing new technologies and best practices in energy efficiency. 

Brian Holuj from the U.S. Department of Energy provided a nice overview of their programs to support the industry, such as Commercial Building Partnership and the Commercial Building Energy Alliances, that are becoming great sources for identifying best practices and assessing new technologies.  Henry Chamberlain, President and COO of BOMA described their own programs like BEEP or BOMA 360, along with collaborative efforts with the USGBC, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Green Building Initiative, in aggregating and facilitating access to the industry support programs. Other panelists provided case studies on how they have used DOE and BOMA resources in real-world energy and sustainability initiatives. 

While everyone agrees that these information sources are helpful, they also recognize that our industry is slow to adopt new practices.  There is too much momentum and comfort with old design and operating practices and our industry lacks good consistent measurement and reporting mechanisms that enable us to more easily and quickly identify the very best practices.  Better and more consistent public reporting will also begin to transform the market as tenants and buyers will be able to better discriminate between average buildings and true high performance buildings.

Dan

Michael Jordan
Energy and Sustainability Services

Today I attended an interesting session entitled “Greening your leased portfolio,” where representatives from the USGBC, Marsh & McClennan, and PepsiCo spoke about integrating LEED into a company’s leasing process.  According to the panel, some of the key considerations are:

- Integrate green building criteria into site selection.  Using CoStar, any broker can check the box to screen for LEED or ENERGY STAR certification as a filter
- Seek longer term leases and to renew instead of move to new space
- Be clear about the obligations to set in the lease
- Be sure to consider change management and influencing employee volunteers to get traction

We are excited that during this week of Earth Day activities that topical issues like green leases are worked into mainstream CRE industry events like CoreNet summits!

A couple of observations to add to the dialogue: 

- Better to focus on economics.  Greener portfolio strategies are accelerated when the focus is on economics in addition to environmental concerns (or, frankly, when the focus is ONLY on economics). 

- The “starting assumption” is important.  Your program can’t just be designed for people who want more green.   If so, you’re leaving out a big part of your opportunity.

- Focusing on leases is not enough.  There is not enough transaction volume in today’s market for this to work.  Leading edge companies need a strategy to address the portfolio, not just new spaces.

We’ve found taking a holistic look at corporate leased portfolios to address both cost optimization as well as environmental goals to be most successful.  Zeroing in on requirements, actions, and tools across the transaction lifecycle, from site selection to execution, fit-out, occupancy, and reporting are what it takes to move the big needle.

Michael