DOE and IMT Reveal 2018 Green Lease Leaders at BOMA

SAN ANTONIO — The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Better Buildings Alliance announced the 2018 Green Lease Leaders at the BOMA International Conference & Expo in San Antonio, a conference which brings together thousands of commercial real estate professionals every year and covers the latest industry trends, building innovations, and operational best practices. Green Lease Leaders recognizes leading-edge companies and real estate practitioners who break down barriers to high-performance buildings by revolutionizing leases to include energy efficiency and sustainability. This year, Green Lease Leaders represented portfolios totaling 717 million square feet (sq ft.), bringing the cumulative floor area of all Green Lease Leaders to more than 1.8 billion sq ft.

To achieve major reductions in building energy usage requires better collaboration between landlords and tenants. With this in mind, Green Lease Leaders, now in its fifth year, continues to elevate industry standards and visibility for real estate leaders who are implementing green, also known as high-performance or energy-aligned leases. Working across a diversity of real estate owners, tenants, brokers, and other stakeholders, green leasing sets terms up-front, and provides a framework for landlords and tenants to ensure building efficiency practices and investments are mutually beneficial and properly executed—helping move past historical road blocks to better building performance and return on investment caused by most standard lease structures.

IMT estimates that green leases can help reduce utility bills by up to $0.51 per square foot (11-22 percent) in U.S. office buildings alone, and if all leased office buildings executed green leases, the market could save over $3 billion in annual cost savings. Lease clauses that 2018’s Green Lease Leaders have implemented address a range of important issues such as energy and water efficiency, health & wellness, employee engagement, indoor air quality, data center efficiency, and zero net energy buildings. Restrictions on HVAC hours, required plug load management, submetering utility data, and periodic retro-commissioning to optimize operations and equipment are just a few of the terms that are currently being fulfilled.

“With leased space representing more than half commercial building energy usage in the U.S., DOE and IMT are working side-by-side with real estate industry leaders on ways to bring building energy efficiency and affordability in leased spaces forward,” said Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency at DOE. “This year’s Green Lease Leaders demonstrate that by using mutually beneficial lease language to collaboratively address building performance, landlords and tenants are achieving higher energy savings and improving tenant satisfaction.”

The 2018 Green Lease Leaders are:

Landlord – Gold Recognition