NEW YORK CITY-Already comprised of some of commercial real estate’s major players, the two-year-old Greenprint Foundation, headquartered here, has stepped up its game even more lately with the commitment of the Blackstone Group, Equity Office Properties and TIAA-CREF. The announcement earlier this month follows the global foundation’s recent alliance with the UK-based Better Building Partnership, which Greenprint CEO Charles B. Leitner tells GlobeSt.com is “very meaningful in terms of adding, on a net basis, 12 new participants in the Greenprint carbon index.”

Developing a comprehensive index of the carbon output of commercial property portfolios across the globe has been one of Greenprint’s key initiatives in establishing its mission. “A lot of what Greenprint is all about initially is participation in the building of the index and the evolution of the index in terms of its use as a tool and its relevance to the industry,” Leitner says. He says the goal for the index is to develop “the standard approach to measuring carbon emissions, benchmarking performance against that index and hopefully clarifying the correlation between energy performance and investment performance.”

With a Greenprint roster that already included Hines Interests, Jones Lang LaSalle and Prudential Real Estate Investors, Leitner says the industry has generally been “very receptive.” He says the hurdles have generally been “pretty basic,” and the foundation strives to accommodate prospective members’ concerns about the financial contribution they must make as well as avoiding overlap with any other initiatives in which they participate.

“The more meaningful part of the pitch is the commitment it takes to share data for a consolidated index,” says Leitner, who stepped down as global head of real estate at Rreef last year to lead Greenprint. (He remains chairman of Rreef, a founding member of Greenprint.) However, Leitner says the fact that leading industry firms have gotten with the Greenprint program is important in getting prospective members “comfortable with the fact that it can be done, and done in a way that doesn’t harm your business but brings you into a leadership position on this particular issue.”

There’s also the sheer logistics of providing the data. “Everybody has access to the data that drives this performance: energy consumption statistics,” says Leitner. Yet he adds, “A lot of organizations aren’t quite set up to provide that data in an automated way, so there is a significant human capital commitment. Some are more equipped than others; we think part of our role is to help transform the industry in that way as well. As with anything else, practices and systems and knowledge are a big part of the equation. It’s not just about acquiring advanced technology.”

Leitner says there’s been a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainability, with investors as well as tenants weighing in. “More than just a social responsibility perspective, they believe more and more that it is an important component of long-term value creation and retention,” he says.

The downturn, far from being an obstacle, has been “a catalyst for more awareness of the relation between energy and financial performance, Leitner says. “Some thought the financial crisis might move the responsibility aspect of green to the side because people didn’t have as much discretionary capital to allocate to it. But in many ways, the opposite has happened. It has become more mainstream as people try to define what the future is and what will be most important in long-term value performance, because the short-term value opportunities of the pre-crisis boom are a thing of the past.”

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Getting with the Energy Efficiency Program

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