WASHINGTON (June 12, 2019) – The Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Greenprint Center for Building Performance has released a new whitepaper and toolkit on embedding sustainability into real estate transactions. The Greenprint Center is a worldwide alliance of leading real estate owners, investors, and strategic partners committed to improving the environmental performance of the global real estate industry. Through measurement, benchmarking, knowledge sharing, and implementation of best practices, Greenprint and its members are striving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

The report, Embedding Sustainability in Real Estate Transactions, produced in conjunction with View, Inc., is based on interviews with more than 30 real estate leaders from around the world, including members of Greenprint. The whitepaper outlines 11 strategic opportunities to embed sustainability into real estate transactions. These include

• During acquisition, taking a due diligence look at actual energy expenses, not estimates;
• Including big ticket items in project financing;
• Upgrading building systems in the right order, and as soon as possible; and
• Marketing your building to buyers that will pay a premium for sustainability.

“With governments passing ambitious new climate and energy policies, the private sector is getting more creative about how to build the business case for energy efficiency and sustainability, and more tactical about how and when they make investments in enhancing building performance,” said Billy Grayson, executive director for ULI’s Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance, which includes the Greenprint Center. “This report demonstrates the commitment ULI members are making to promote sustainability in their work and portfolios.”

The paper adds to ULI’s ongoing efforts to promote sustainable development practices and improve the resilience of communities worldwide, and to highlight the Institute’s role in helping to mitigate the effects of climate change that are related to the built environment.

About ULI’s Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance

The ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance is dedicated to creating healthy, resilient, and high-performance communities around the world. Through the work of its Greenprint, Building Healthy Places, and Urban Resilience programs, the Center provides leadership and support to real estate and land use professionals to invest in energy efficient, healthy, resilient, and sustainable buildings and communities.

About the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance

The ULI Greenprint Center’s mission is to lead the global real estate industry towards improved environmental performance, focusing on energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions. Greenprint is a member-driven organization that achieves its goals through measurement, action and education.

Greenprint’s flagship product is the Annual Performance Report: the international scope and size of the report makes it one of the real estate industry’s largest, most transparent and comprehensive environmental benchmarks. The report is a consolidated view of participating properties, detailing their energy, water and waste performance by geography and asset class, while also showcasing project profiles achieving those savings and highlight trends driving the sustainability market forward.

Greenprint is comprised of the following members: BlackRock; CalPERS;  Clarion Partners; CommonWealth Partners; DWS; GID; GLL Real Estate Partners; Granite Properties; Heitman; The Howard Hughes Corporation; Jamestown Properties; Jones Lang LaSalle; Kilroy Realty; LaSalle Investment Management; LendLease Americas, Morgan Creek Ventures LLC; Parkway Properties; PGIM Real Estate; Prologis; Rudin Management Company, Inc.; Savanna; Sonae Sierra; SL Green, Tishman Speyer, The Net Group, and Zurich Alternative Asset Management.

For additional information, visit uli.org/greenprint.

About View 

View is a technology company creating smart and connected buildings to improve people’s health and wellness, while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. View is also the market leader in smart windows that that let in natural light and views and enhance mental and physical well-being by significantly reducing headaches, eyestrain and drowsiness. Every View installation includes a ‘smart building platform’ that consists of power, network and communication infrastructure. The recently released SmartProtect, is the first of several IoT applications on this platform designed to make building spaces healthier, smarter, and more productive. For more information, please visit: http://www.view.com