Reduce the Environmental Impact of Your Property

An increasing number of companies are beginning to focus on their overall environmental impact. Some use the triple bottom line to measure it. If you are tracking carbon footprint, adopting energy and water conservation, pursuing recycling programs or other sustainability initiatives, your property is an important part of these efforts.

Sustainability goals typically exceed energy cost reduction objectives as shown below. Sustainability will include additional energy conservation measures as well as non-energy measures such as water conservation, indoor air quality, emissions control, and waste reduction.
     

Energy Star Benchmarking

ENERGY STAR is the first logical step in any energy conservation program, and their national facility benchmarking standard can be used to assess your portfolio.

LEED® Certification

Beyond energy use, you can certify the sustainability of your building using a program like LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Certification of your property(s) requires you to go thru a formal process to demonstrate your sustainable practices. Using these same principles and checklists even when not pursuing a certification - improves awareness and attention to these issues.

Green Globes

Green Globes is a parallel program to LEED, and is used by some companies. The conceptual approaches are similar with difference in how the programs are managed and specific criteria for rating levels. Read a comparison of Green Globe and LEED.