Real Estate
Commercial Office Buildings and Retail Space
Just Getting Started?
See the five fundamental steps you can take to understand your company's biggest environmental opportunities.
In today’s difficult financial environment, building owners and tenants have a prime opportunity to get back to basics, cut costs, and improve the value of their asset. There are few investments with better returns than improving energy efficiency and adopting green building practices to ensure that your property attracts top tenants, retains resale value and hedges energy price volatility.
Make your buildings and operations more environmentally friendly
- Prioritize your climate efforts. It's important to proceed in a strategic fashion to get the greatest energy savings and carbon emissions reductions. Use EDF’s 4 Cs of Climate Action to develop a framework for your company’s greening efforts.
- Focus first on alternative workplace strategies. The greenest office is one that doesn’t exist. Smart office space management consolidates underutilized offices and deploys strategies like allowing employees to work from home, eliminating the need to construct new facilities and reducing utility and construction costs. To learn more about alternative workplace strategies, see this presentation prepared by the real estate firm Studley.
- Maximize energy efficiency. Improving the energy efficiency of commercial buildings presents a huge opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—and boost the bottom line. The Environmental Protection Agency, US Green Building Council, and the Green Building Initiative offer valuable information on what constitutes an energy efficient building and the environmental and financial benefits of retrofitting one. Save energy from more efficient data centers and using computing clusters.
- Reduce water use. Reduce your buildings water footprint and cut costs by installing low-flow faucets, water-saving toilets and drought tolerant landscaping. Learn about other actions leading companies are taking.
- Build green. strive for LEED Certification when constructing new buildings.
- Get certified. Certification is not a replacement for active day to day management of your building. However, certification programs can provide valuable technical support, ensure you’re focused on the greatest environmental opportunities and make your building more attractive to tenants and buyers seeking green credentials. Energy Star for Buildings, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Green Globes are just a few of the certification programs available. Select a certification that is highly credible and provides the greatest value to your company.
- Host an EDF Climate Corps Fellow. Climate Corps Fellows spend up to three months identifying and analyzing savings opportunities at host companies. They also develop detailed investment and implementation plans that help businesses cut costs and reduce emissions.
Improve your building’s operations
- Improve paper choices. Offices consume large quantities of paper for printing, faxes and copies. Reduce your paper use and choose eco-friendly paper options.
- Green your corporate cafeterias. Us the comprehensive set of Green Dining Best Practices for the food service and dining industry to improve the environmental performance of your dining facilities in a cost-effective manner.
- Collaborate with tenants and owners. It’s critical for tenants and owners to work together in promoting energy efficiency. Lease terms can be modified so that the costs and benefits of these investments are shared. BOMA has developed a sample green lease, and EPA offers energy efficiency lease language.
- Leverage property management firms. Real estate management firms are in a prime position to use suppliers with eco-friendly cleaning chemicals, office supplies and paper products, and to facilitate the greening efforts of their clients with new programs and services.
- Investigate innovative financing options. A number of low or no cost financing solutions are emerging in the marketplace. BOMA and the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) have partnered together to help building owners navigate the maze of legal, financial and technical issues associated with energy efficiency retrofits with their Building Energy Retrofit Program. Large portfolio holders can utilize tools developed by BetterBricks and third parties like RealWinWin to optimize capital budgeting decisions.
Examples: What real estate firms are doing
- Large real estate holding companies like Simon Properties and Liberty Property Trust are cutting operating costs and increasing asset value with energy efficiency and greening programs for their buildings.
- Leading real estate management firms like CB Richard Ellis, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Cushman Wakefield are rolling out a range of services to help their clients become Energy Star and LEED certified, incorporating sustainable procurement guidelines and walking the talk by making their own buildings and operations green.
- Bank of America has committed $1.4 billion to achieve LEED certification in all new construction of offices and banking centers, including the Bank of America Tower in NYC—the first skyscraper to achieve LEED platinum certification.
- In 2008, seven leading companies including Yahoo!, Intuit and Cisco Systems hosted EDF Climate Corps Fellows, who went on to develop energy efficiency plans for their host companies that, once implemented, will save over $35 million in five years.
Posted: 29-Oct-2008; Updated: 23-Jun-2009
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