More than half of respondents, 53%, said that they currentlyhave a sustainability policy while another 23% of respondents aredeveloping a policy. Still, "We are seeing a pretty wide variety,"says Dan Probst, chairman of the global environmentalsustainability board at JLL. Some companies are just beginning tolook at sustainability issues while "others are a little bitfurther along and have been working for a couple of years andcreated internal programs," he says. The findings echo a surveydone by Real Estate Media in September 2007, which showed that themajority of the 392 professionals who responded have a commitmentto being green, but that companies still have a long way to go,such as having performance monitoring, training and separate lineitems in their budgets.

In the JLL survey, more than half of all respondents, 52%, saidenergy efficiency was one of their main priorities when it comes tosustainability. Additionally, 55% of survey respondents have setpolicies in the past five years to reduce energy consumption,according to a survey report. "For any corporation, particularly ifyou are not a manufacturer, 40% to 50% of your total carbonemissions are probably associated with your real estate occupancy,"Probst says. When a new building is constructed, there is an extracost to make it "green" but "that premium has diminished quite abit," he says. Making an existing building more "green" has a"pretty attractive payback" as those buildings "typically havegreatly reduced energy costs of 30% to 40%," Probst says.