Value Beyond Cost Savings - Green Building Finance Consortium

Value Beyond Cost Savings: How to Underwrite Sustainable Propertiesleadership, compliance with internal/external policies or initiatives, and reduced risk tofuture earnings. Individual occupant performance—health, productivity and satisfaction arepart of enterprise level occupant performance.Reductions in resource use have been discussed in the prior section. The key focus ofoccupant performance is the occupant’s share of potential reductions in resource use/cost,relative to property owners.Improved reputation/leadership can be measured directly by surveys, stock analyst reports,and indirectly through assessment of how sustainable property investment has influencedrecruiting, employee retention or satisfaction, marketing and sales, and brand awareness.This “evidence” of occupant performance relative to improved reputation and leadershipmay be found in the surveys and market research done for other parts of an occupant’sbusiness, and not typically in a traditional building measurement or monitoring program.Occupant performance relative to compliance with internal/external policies and initiativescan be measured through an examination of trends in the importance of owned or leasedreal estate to the Global Reporting Initiative, the Carbon Disclosure Project, therequirements of socially responsible investment funds, government agencies, or acorporation’s own Corporate Social Responsibility strategy and communications. At aproperty level, the question is how important is sustainable owned or leased real estate tothe types of tenants expected to be leasing in the building.The final measure of enterprise-level occupant performance is reduced risk to futureearnings. This type of performance can be measured through monitoring of litigation andlegal costs, subleasing trends relative to sustainable property, energy cost volatility, andchanges in the level of importance of sustainability to key employees, customers, capitalproviders, vendors, and other stakeholders. If the importance of sustainability increases tothe stakeholders, the risks to future earnings, on either a positive or negative basis, could besignificantly influenced by sustainable property investment.Summary Conclusions on Occupant PerformanceIn summary, based on all of the Consortium’s research, including its review of over 200individual health and productivity studies identified in Appendices IV-C and IV-D ofExpanded Chapter IV, its review of resource reduction in sustainable properties, its detailedanalysis of the costs and benefits of sustainable properties in Chapter V, and its evaluationof corporate sustainability policies and trends towards sustainable buildings, there is aclear positive relationship between sustainable property investment and occupantperformance. Occupant performance measurement is in its infancy, as is the occupantmarket’s response to improved occupant performance, but the trends are supportive offurther close attention and analysis.The key scientific studies that support the Consortium’s summary conclusion above andmore detailed conclusions on health and productivity below are presented in substantial69