July 21, 2008—International real estate money management and services firm Jones Lang LaSalle recently announced the acquisition of ECD Energy and Environment Canada, original developer of the Green Globes environmental assessment and rating systems for commercial properties and proprietor of the new construction module in Canada.
Jones Lang LaSalle announced the acquisition as part of its strategy to help clients build profitable businesses through environmentally sustainable real estate use, which also includes its recent acquisition of Upstream, the UK’s leading real estate sustainability services practice.
As part of the agreement, the Green Building Initiative (GBI) will retain licensing rights to develop and distribute two modules, Green Globes for New Construction, and Green Globes for Continual Improvement of Existing Buildings, in the US. The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada will retain rights to further develop and distribute the existing buildings module in Canada under the brand name “Go Green Plus.”
Jones Lang LaSalle explains that ECD Energy and Environment Canada was instrumental in bringing the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) to Canada in 1996, which was the genesis of the Green Globes assessment and benchmarking tools in use today. First introduced as BREEAM Canada, the tool was developed through the Canadian Standards Association with input from leading construction, design and environmental experts, before being introduced in its current Web-based form as Green Globes.
In 2004, the GBI acquired the rights to distribute Green Globes in the US and has focused on continually refining the system in an open and transparent forum to ensure that it reflects changing opinions and ongoing advances in research and technology. To that end, in 2005, GBI became the first green building organization to be accredited as a standards developer by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and began the process of establishing Green Globes as the first American National Standard for commercial green building. The GBI recently completed the ANSI-required public comment period for the proposed standard and hopes to publish the final standard before the end of 2008.
