July 14, 2006—Green is rapidly becoming a necessity as companies as diverse as Bank of America, Genzyme, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and Toyota are now pushing green buildings fully into the mainstream, according to “Building the Green Way” by Charles Lockwood. The article in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review makes the case for green and cites the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) and its LEED Green Building Rating System. The article examines the national energy crisis, and raises a looming threat to commercial real estate portfolios.
Before 2000, companies generally regarded green buildings as interesting experiments but unfeasible projects in the real business world, says the article. Since then, several factors have caused a major shift in corporate thinking and pushed green to the tipping point, including the creation of reliable building-rating and performance measurement systems for new construction and renovations, and hundreds of studies that have proven the financial advantages of going green.
