Building Green Achieves More Than Efficiency & Sustainability

In reality, there is no significant difference in the cost of building green, as compared to non-green buildings. Even though construction costs have risen dramatically over the past year, the number of projects achieving LEED certification is continuing to grow. More importantly, most projects are achieving LEED certification within their budgets and within the same price range as non-LEED projects.

According to a recent study by the CoStar Group, buildings designed or retrofitted with green practices such as sustainability, conservation and efficiency measures outperform similar non-green properties. Buildings certified under such systems as LEED and the Energy Star Labeling programs are in higher demand in the consumer market today. Not just because of efficiency improvements, minimization of environmental impact, and increase in renewable materials and resources. The study’s findings proved that green buildings are beneficial to margins, as well as the environment, leading to higher sales prices, rental rates and occupancy rates. Another recent study by the University of California, Berkeley (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/507394s4), proved that rent prices for green offices are on average 2% higher than rents for comparable non-green buildings located in the same area.

The USGBC LEED rating system and the Energy Star Labeling (http://www.energystar.gov) program have different methods of achieving green building practices, but they both work toward the same goal of sustainability. LEED measures how well a building or community perform in energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. The Energy Star Label specifically looks to define and measure the efficiency of buildings so as to achieve reduced operating costs and decreased overall energy use. Find out more about green building and how renewable energy can be involved by visiting our website, or scroll through our LEED and Energy Star green building programs.