Value Beyond Cost Savings - Green Building Finance Consortium

Value Beyond Cost Savings: How to Underwrite Sustainable Propertieslife cycle, and other attributes that will enable readers to select a more limited number ofrating and assessment systems applicable to their situation.For the purposes of a financial analysis, it is important to understand the range ofassessment systems and tools that are in use or under development. In market-basedfinancial analysis or valuation, numerous certification and assessment systems willtypically be applied to a single property. To determine which certification and assessmentsystems are important for a single property, the underwriter/valuer must evaluate howregulators, users and investors utilize and rely upon different assessment systems or tools.Sustainable property certification and assessment systems come in many forms. In order toaid evaluation and understanding of these alternative approaches, we organize the manymeasurement and certification systems into six categories:• Building environmental assessments and certifications;• Occupier focused assessments;• Government regulations and assessment systems;• Other building performance assessments and standards;• Product/material assessments and certifications; and,• Service provider assessments and certifications.Building environmental assessments and certifications include some of the mostrecognized “green” building certifications like LEED, BREEAM, CASBEE, andGreenStar.Occupier focused assessments, such as the Global Reporting Initiative or the IPDEnvironmental Code, are specialized whole building assessments that have particularinfluence on the real estate decisions of tenants and owner occupants.Government regulations and incentives cover literally thousands (there are 44,000 localgovernments in the U.S. alone) of regulations, incentives, codes and related assessmentsystems being promulgated by Federal, State, local and other levels of government andquasi-governmental agencies such as utilities.Other building performance assessments and standards include a variety of systemsfocused on building outcomes and performance, as opposed to just environmentalcertification.Beyond building assessment systems, there are scores of product and materialassessments and certifications. Many of these product, material or feature certificationsare incorporated as part of broader whole building rating systems.23