The Offices Are Greener in Chicago for a Second Straight Year

Chicago is the greenest U.S. city to work in for the second year running, with about 70 percent of its office space now certified for environmental efficiency, a new study shows.

The Windy City’s percentage of green offices is up from about 66 percent last year, placing it ahead of San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul, according to an annual ranking by CBRE Group Inc.and Maastricht University. The study tracks buildings in 30 of the biggest U.S. real estate markets that are LEED or Energy Star certified.

Across the 30 areas, about 4,700 buildings are now green certified -- or a record 41 percent of the total square footage of office space in those cities, the study shows.

Green certification has “become a proxy for good building management,” said David Pogue, a senior vice president at CBRE. “Particularly in the services sector, a lot of their energy use and environmental impact is in the buildings they occupy, so the tenant base is demanding this, and institutional financiers also believe a sustainable building is a better building.”   Click here to continue reading