Have You Heard of Globe Forum?

Designing, building, and maintaining a green office building may require extra time and effort, but tenants are sending a clear message to the real estate industry – environmental sustainability is here to stay and of critical importance. Jones Lang LaSalle partnered with CoreNet Global to query attendees of CoreNet Global Summits on four continents over a six month period in 2007.

The results show that corporate real estate professionals around the world are grappling with sustainability and see it as a near term critical issue for their business. Globally, approximately half of all respondents answered that sustainability is a critical issue now, and nearly 80% cumulatively said that sustainability would be critical to corporate real estate within two years. Respondents in Europe lead the pack, not surprisingly, in terms of the immediacy of sustainability, with the US not far behind. The level of interest, information flow, and pressure on the topic has certainly escalated exponentially in 2007. Even emerging markets in Asia Pacific are thinking about and beginning to act on sustainability in real estate.

What issues are of most importance regarding sustainability? Corporate survey respondents ranked energy utilization as the most important issue currently. Interestingly, other specific environmental issues such as water utilization and carbon emissions were ranked lower, and by a fairly significant gap. This suggests that while the importance of corporate sustainability is increasing, not all of the details are yet in full focus, and companies may not be fully grasping how intertwined the components are in terms of their cumulative impact on the environment. The factor that respondents said would be most likely to increase the importance of sustainability was again increasing energy costs. With energy unitization ranking highly on the current priority list, and increasing energy costs ranking as most likely to escalate the issue, corporates clearly recognize that sustainability can become a “cost saving” technique on the energy front with a positive impact on the economic bottom line in addition to being important environmentally.

It seems that one of the key components of sustainability in real estate that has held back the industry is the lack understanding of the costs of “green” buildings and environmentally friendly property features as well as the willingness of tenants to pay a premium for solutions that costs more. What is encouraging, however, is that overwhelmingly the survey confirms that tenants are willing to pay a premium for sustainable real estate solutions.

The results of this survey seem to confirm that the market has passed the tipping point for sustainability. The question is no longer about whether sustainable design should be considered or pursued in commercial real estate. The question will be – how do you justify why you chose not to have a sustainable design.

For those interested Globe Forum is a global social network aimed at engaging all parties that influence Global Sustainablility through Energey conservation and alternatives.  Visit and join the network here
The 3-page condensed report can be downloaded here (PDF, 41K).