January 6, 2012—Just 10 years ago, being a good steward of the environment wasn’t as critical of a focus as it is now for companies hoping to attract and maintain customers and building owners in need of new tenants. Now, companies and building owners without an agenda to improve their sustainability are nearly as hard to find as ones without a Web site. As we go into year 2012, Dan Probst, chairman of energy and sustainability services at Jones Lang LaSalle, a financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate, has outlined what he expects to be major sustainability trends driven by companies and building owners, as well as cities and nations.
Probst’s trends to watch for are:
- Transparency: Buildings, companies and cities are measuring and disclosing energy usage, carbon emissions and other information relating to sustainability. Commercial building owners don’t always have a choice: five major U.S. cities and two states have enacted energy performance measurement and disclosure policies to date, and nine more cities and states have bills under considerations, to help tenants and investors make better informed decisions. Buildings in Europe are required to display energy performance certificates, and Australia is implementing similar requirements.
- Global Consistency: Deeper sustainability reporting by cities and multi-national corporations has intensified the need for consistent ways to measure the effectiveness of energy, water and other sustainability strategies on a worldwide basis. Given the wide regional variation in environmental priorities around the world, the end goal may not be a single global standard, but a way to translate local government and business practices into a common global vocabulary for measuring effectiveness and recognizing achievement. The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building sustainability rating system is now frequently pursued in many countries with their own systems, as owners seek to attract international tenants. ENERGY STAR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) energy-benchmarking standard, will soon be able to provide accurate ratings across North America, thanks to a new cooperative agreement with Canada. And in 2011, the International Organization for Standardization released the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems, which includes specifications for measurement, documentation and reporting on energy consumption.
- Public/Private Collaboration: 2011 stood out as a year when government and business organizations explored their shared green goals and realized that public-private partnerships and collaborative initiatives are often the best way to overcome obstacles to sustainability. Some of these joint efforts will start to bear fruit in 2012. A clear example of this, Probst says, is the December announcement of a $4 billion energy retrofit commitment by the U.S. federal government and 60 CEOs (chief executive officers), mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders. Called the Better Buildings Challenge, the eight-year initiative includes $2 billion in energy upgrades of federal buildings and another $2 billion of private capital to improve energy by 20 percent in buildings totaling 1.5 billion square feet.
- Focus on Solar Energy: 2011 was a breakthrough year for new installations in the United States, and continued growth is seen for 2012, albeit at a slower pace. More than 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic solar energy capacity was installed across the United States in the first three quarters of 2011, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. By comparison, 887 megawatts came online in all of 2010, which represented a doubling of the total installed base at the time.
- Global Consistency: Deeper sustainability reporting by cities and multi-national corporations has intensified the need for consistent ways to measure the effectiveness of energy, water and other sustainability strategies on a worldwide basis. Given the wide regional variation in environmental priorities around the world, the end goal may not be a single global standard, but a way to translate local government and business practices into a common global vocabulary for measuring effectiveness and recognizing achievement. The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building sustainability rating system is now frequently pursued in many countries with their own systems, as owners seek to attract international tenants. ENERGY STAR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) energy-benchmarking standard, will soon be able to provide accurate ratings across North America, thanks to a new cooperative agreement with Canada. And in 2011, the International Organization for Standardization released the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems, which includes specifications for measurement, documentation and reporting on energy consumption.
