Green Spotlight On Large Buildings

Green building adoption is primarily a big building-first tier city phenomenon in the US.  62.1% of office buildings, greater than 500,000 square feet, are considered “green”, compared to just 4.5% of smaller buildings -  spanning less than 100,000 square feet.   This figure was drawn in a recent  joint  CBRE  and Maastricht University project coined the 2015 Green Building Adoption Index. Based on US office buildings holding either an EPA ENERGY STAR label, U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) full-building LEED certification or both.   This is creating an opportunity for small buildings to differentiate themselves by implementing energy-efficient practices, due to a significant gap between large and small office buildings in achieving sustainability certification.   In terms of a US green city breakdown which covered 30 of the largest US cities. Minneapolis topped the charts for a second consecutive year, with 70.4 percent of all office space currently qualified as green. San Francisco, in second place, significantly closed the gap and now boasts a 70.0 percent green market, up from 67.2 percent in 2014. Chicago, at 63.4 percent, polled third, while Atlanta (57.8 percent) and Houston (52.9 percent) swapped positions at fourth and fifth. The top 10 cities on the 2014 list all retained a place on the 2015 list.   These results demonstrate the uptake of green building practices continues to be significant, but that the growth is slowing.  At the end of 2014, 13.1 percent of the commercial building stock had an ENERGY STAR label, LEED certification, or both, compared to 13.8 percent at the end of 2013. Measured by size, the amount of certified commercial space also decreased from 39.3 percent in 2013 to 38.7 percent at the end of 2014.   This decrease does not imply that buildings are starting to perform worse than before. Instead, it reflects the fact that only a certain fraction of the building stock can obtain a green or energy-efficiency certification.  In addition, some of the buildings that were previously certified did not renew their certification in 2014. This does not necessarily mean that the energy use of these buildings has changed, but that some owners and managers choose not to spend the time or expense to reapply for certification each year.

2015 Green Building Adoption Index 

Top 5 Green Office Markets 

 

Market	2015 Rank	2015 %	2014 Rank	2014 %
Minneapolis	1	70.4	1	77.0
San Francisco	2	70.0	2	67.2
Chicago	3	63.4	3	62.1
Atlanta	4	57.8	5	54.1
Houston	5	52.9	4	54.8