November 1, 2007—Building and maintaining a green office tower may require extra time and effort, but corporate respondents to a recent international survey say they are prepared to overcome the obstacles and embrace sustainable practices with open arms.
CoreNet Global, an international association of workplace and corporate real estate executives, and Jones Lang LaSalle, a major real estate service provider, queried more than 2,300 attendees of CoreNet Global Summits on four continents in recent months, receiving an 18 percent response rate of 414 industry professionals. Together, they learned that a large majority of companies around the world view sustainability as critical to their business and are willing to pay a premium to help their companies become more sustainable.
CoreNet Global and Jones Lang LaSalle found that, for an overwhelming 79% of respondents, sustainability is a near-term business issue that’s important today, or will be in the next one to two years.
According to the survey, most companies are willing to pay for sustainable real estate solutions. The report show that many companies don’t realize that the cost of sustainability has come down.
Although studies indicate that designing sustainable buildings costs about 1-5% more than conventional construction, 52% said premiums would be 5% or more, and 22% believed green buildings would cost 10% more than conventional building.
Survey respondents also named obstacles to sustainability that have hindered widespread adoption:
- Only 17% said that there is good, or widely available, sustainable real estate solutions in markets where their companies need to locate offices;
- 42% reported patchiness and said the supply chain is good in some markets but not others; and
- 41% view overall availability as limited or minimal.
While sustainable building is becoming more critical the world over, its intensity varies from continent to continent. According to the results:
- 61% of respondents in Europe feel sustainability is a critical business now;
- 53% feel that way in Australia; while
- Only 44% of respondents who attended the Denver Global Summit feel that sustainability is critical right now.
