Posts

NGBAI-banner.jpg

NGBAI-banner.jpg

With 41.6 percent of its office space considered “green,” Miami ranked ninth of 30 markets on the 2015 Green Building Adoption Index, a joint project of CBRE Group, Inc. and Maastricht University.

For the purposes of this report, “green” office space is defined as holding either an EPA ENERGY STAR label, U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) full-building LEED certification or both. Using square feet as a measure, 41.6% of Miami’s office market is “green” – well above the national average of 38.7%.  Moreover, Miami ranked particularly well in terms of number of buildings considered green – over 17%. By square feet, 21.84% of Miami’s office market has a LEED certification, and over a third of the office market is ENERGY STAR rated.

This is the second year in a row that Miami ranked ninth on the list, behind U.S. cities such as Minneapolis, which led the Green Building Adoption Index’s city ranking for the second consecutive year with 70.4 percent of all office space currently qualified as green (down from 77.0 percent in 2014.)  San Francisco, again in second place, significantly closed the gap and now boasts a 70 percent green market, up from 67.2 percent in 2014. Chicago, at 63.4 percent, was third, while Atlanta (57.8 percent) and Houston (52.9 percent) swapped positions at fourth and fifth. The top 10 cities on the 2014 list all retained a place on the 2015 list.

The study also found that owners of small buildings have an opportunity to differentiate themselves by implementing energy-efficient practices, due to a significant gap between large and small office buildings in achieving sustainability certification. For example, 62.1 percent of office buildings in the U.S. greater than 500,000 square feet are considered green. In contrast, only 4.5 percent of all U.S. office buildings less than 100,000 square feet qualified as green.

“Our 2015 study confirmed that green building adoption has been primarily a big building, first-tier city phenomenon,” said David Pogue, CBRE’s global director of corporate responsibility. “It would appear that many smaller buildings in the majority of large markets still have an opportunity to be ‘best in class’ among their peer set by achieving these certifications.”

Executed in close collaboration with the USGBC and CBRE Research, this is the second release of the annual Green Building Adoption Index. Based on a rigorous methodology, the Index shows the growth of ENERGY STAR- and LEED-certified space for the 30 largest U.S. office markets, both in aggregate and in individual markets, over the previous 10 years.

GreenMiami4

 

Sources: CRE-sources

Many Miami real estate investors are doing their part to ward off global warming and save energy as the city ranked high for green commercial real estate.

A new study by CBRE Group and Maastrict University ranked Miami ninth in the nation, with 19.4 percent of its commercial real estate certified as green. There are 79 buildings totaling 21 million square feet of office space with either U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification or Energy Star labels.

Given that South Florida would be among the first places in the nation to be swamped by sea level rise, that’s a helpful move.

“Miami was slow to embrace green building standards relative to cities like San Francisco and Manhattan, but has caught up quickly thanks in part to good public policy and buy-in from owners and investors who realize there is growing demand from tenants for more sustainable, energy efficient space,” said Patricia Nooney, LEED AP, who leads investor services for CBRE Florida, in a news release.

In fact, Miami’s municipal code requires all new private development over 50,000 square feet to achieve LEED Silver certification.

The study rated Minneapolis as the greenest city for commercial real estate, with 77 percent of buildings certified as green.

Since 2005, the number of LEED certified buildings has increased more than 1,000 percent nationwide.

Florida homeowners are also going green. A recent study by the USGCB ranked Florida seventh for the most LEED-certified homes, with 1,860. California was first, with 9,186.

 

Source: SFBJ