With the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) about to release its first Green Leasing guide and tool kit early in 2012 Johnson Controls Energy Solutions takes a closer look at the challenges and opportunities.
Says Karl van Eck, regional general manager at Johnson Controls: "Green leasing offers enormous benefits to property owners, tenants, governments and, of course, the planet. By making use of new approaches, technologies and equipment to, among others, conserve the use of water and energy and better manage waste, tenants and owners can cut costs and emissions - reducing their carbon footprint."
For the tenant it means a healthier environment and greater staff productivity, lower utility bills and meeting triple bottom line requirements. For the building owner, a green rating increases the marketability and market value of the asset. LEED rated buildings in the USA, for instance, have an 8% occupancy rate and a 17% higher rental return for owners.
The investment for a building owner can be significant, as greening a building may include replacing or upgrading lighting as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems; possibly integrating disparate systems to a single building management systems to ensure optimal energy usage; or even adapting the 'skin' of a building for better insulation and to promote greater use of natural light.
Recovering those costs could take a number of years. As benefits of greening mostly accrue directly to tenants, who not only save on energy use but can offer staff more pleasant, healthier surroundings, it makes sense for the building owner to recover all of the costs through amended lease clauses. These can, however, prove difficult to negotiate, especially if you are talking about a 20-storey building with more than 100 tenants whose leases all expire at different times.
For tenants a key underlying driver in South Africa is the cost of energy that rises by 25% yearly. "While tenants who are committed to sustainable operations can implement a number of actions to shrink their company's carbon footprint, green leasing will only become a reality when owners and tenants all buy into and enforce the practice of green building operation principles," says Van Eck.
The GBCSA has over the last four months been hard at work with partners and industry stakeholders like the South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA) to put together guidelines and a practical tool kit to introduce green leasing to the South African market and facilitate its implementation.
Says Manfred Braune of the GBCSA: "While it's been very important and useful to put in place a South African green building rating system for new structures and major refurbishments, similar to the USA's LEED rating system, for the bulk of building stock in South Africa once-off large refurbishments are often too costly and thus not done - going green, to be viable, has to be feasible in smaller incremental steps, and in a way that landlords and tenants can both share in the benefit of improved building performance. The Green Lease Tool Kit identifies ways in which this can be done, and provides tools for South African landlords and tenants to collaborate towards this common goal."
The Green Lease Tool Kit looks at how tenants and owners can benefit from green leasing, at ways of engaging to achieve this, and the challenges and opportunities that arise at different stages of greening an operational building.
