At a certain point, practices that start out as niceties becomenecessities, either through government mandate or economicrealities. Today, companies often think of making their buildingsenergy efficient as a good long-term goal that will be gottenaround to when there's time and money to make the necessarychanges. But in the face of rising energy costs, increasing publicinterest in global warming and the potential for new state andfederal regulations, more real estate managers are beginning to seethat the right time is now, the benefits are large and theinvestment is actually small.

In a survey that formed the basis for the "Energy Challenge: ANew Agenda for Corporate Real Estate," a report recently releasedby CoreNet Global and the Rocky Mountain Institute, nearly everyexecutive picked "important" or "most important" to describe thesignificance of energy efficiency (94%) and sustainability (83%)among all issues affecting corporate real estate. Unfortunately,the same report found that fewer than half of participants haveenergy policies or consumption targets in place, and less than athird of the firms surveyed are working on finding no-cost andlow-cost ways to lower energy consumption.

Nonetheless, there are companies that are making progress. Moreimportantly, they are sharing their success stories as models thatothers can emulate.