Michael Ivanovich

Useful Green Building Data and Reports
June 12, 2008

There have been some good reports released this year on green buildings. Some folks haven't year heard about them and others can't find them easily. So, here is a digest of hyperlinks that I find myself forwarding to a lot of people lately, including a link to a report that has good baseline data for comparing green building performance to a generalized pool of buildings.- 

Here is the recent New Buildings Institute study on the energy efficiency performance of LEED NC buildings, which reports that among the sample set they had of LEED-certified buildings occupied for a year or more and providing metered energy data, LEED buildings performed about 25% better than average buildings.

CoStar, a “multiple-listing service” for commercial properties, teamed with the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at the University of San Diego. The group analyzed more than 1,300 LEED and Energy Star buildings representing about 351 million square feet in CoStar’s commercial property database of roughly 44 billion square feet, and assessed those buildings against non-green properties with similar size, location, class, tenancy and year-built characteristics to generate the results. CoStar has a relationship So, here's a link to the CoStar study of LEED and Energy Star buildings’ financial benefits to owners. And below is a a snippet from the report:

               According to the CoStar study, LEED buildings command rent premiums of $11.33 per square foot over their non-LEED peers and have 4.1 percent higher occupancy. Rental rates in Energy Star buildings represent a $2.40 per square foot premium over comparable non-Energy Star buildings and have 3.6 percent higher occupancy.

               And, in a trend that could signal greater attention from institutional investors, Energy Star buildings are selling for an average of $61 per square foot more than their peers, while LEED buildings command a remarkable $171 more per square foot.

You may have heard that the USGBC is accepting comments to LEED 2009, which is meant to update LEED NC v2.2 and integrate the LEED family of rating systems. The link for LEED 2009, which is a red-lined version of LEED NC 2.2 combined with other information, is kind of hard to find, so here's the link.

And, here's the 2007 Dept. of Energy “Buildings Data Book,” which has great information on building-energy use, characteristics of buildings, and other industry data.

Happy reading!

Posted by Michael Ivanovich on June 12, 2008 | Comments (0)