Business News
Leading Companies Partner to Improve the Energy and Environmental Attributes of Leased Space
Tuesday 09. February 2010 - The members of the Coalition for Energy & Environmental Leadership in Leased Space today issued the following statement:
A group of leading U.S. corporations has formed a coalition to drive an increase in the availability of competitively priced leased space that also provides energy efficient and other environmental attributes.
These companies recognize that it is often easier to secure leading-edge energy and environmental features in a workplace when an organization owns its building, is designing a new building from scratch, or is presenting a large leasing opportunity to a landlord. However, it can be much harder to secure these features when the organization is just leasing a relatively small amount of space in a large multi-tenant building and therefore has much less leverage.
By joining together, the Coalition hopes to favorably affect this latter circumstance to make more environmentally sustainable leased spaces increasingly the standard rather than the exception in the marketplace.
The Coalition members are DuPont; Fluor Corporation; IBM Corporation; Pitney Bowes Inc.; and the Switzer Group.
“Collectively, these companies lease approximately 25 million square feet of commercial office space in the U.S. alone, much of which is in multi-tenant buildings,” said the Coalitions lead Edan Dionne, of IBM. “We formed this group to amplify our common desire for more efficient, environmentally sustainable space and to urge property owners to respond to this need.”
To aid in accomplishing its objective, the Coalition is announcing their development of a baseline Environmental and Energy Efficiency Attributes Checklist that addresses requirements in four areas: sustainable site management; water efficiency; energy efficiency; and materials and resources.
Members of the group commit to
Make the Checklist a standard part of their requests for proposal(RFPs) for new leases and lease renewals for office space in the U.S.
Include the providers response as a factor in making lease decisions;
Develop appropriate metrics to measure progress
Actions under this initiative are intended to complement, not replace, individual companies activities for improving building environmental and energy efficiency such as those pursuant to the U.S. Green Building Councils Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating systems.
Membership in the Coalition is open to all organizations willing to make and carry out the same commitment.