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INSIDE
W hether it’s new energy
benchmarking stan-
dards or a push for green
rooftops, there’s a new
sustainability-focused
headline in Denver every week. In
reality, the trend toward improving
building operating performance and
enhancing building quality is alive
and well on a national scale.
Earlier this summer, our research
team released its annual Green
Building Adoption Index, a study
conducted in partnership with
Maastricht University. For the fourth
year in a row, Denver ranked among
the top 10 U.S. cities for the percent
of its office space qualified as green.
In the study, green
office buildings are
defined as those
that hold either
an Environmental
Protection Agency
Energy Star label,
U.S. Green Building
Council LEED certi-
fication or both.
Ranking No. 7
nationally, Den-
ver’s green build-
ing figures were
up slightly year
over year. Accord-
ing to the 2017 report, 13.3 percent
of Denver office buildings are certi-
fied green, compared to 11.8 per-
cent last year. While that seems a
little low to rank among the top 10,
Denver’s green buildings have large
footprints. In terms of square foot-
age, 41.9 percent of Denver’s office
square footage is certified green.
So, who is leading the pack? Chi-
cago claimed the top spot on CBRE’s
National Green Building Adoption
Index this year, with 18.1 percent of
its office buildings (and 66 percent
of its total office footprint) certified
green. San Francisco, Atlanta, Hous-
ton and Minneapolis rounded out
the top five.
At a national level, the study
found that institutional owners of
office buildings continued to pur-
sue green building certifications
in the 30 largest U.S. metro areas.
Overall 10.3 percent of all buildings
surveyed were found to be Energy
Star labeled, while 4.7 percent
were LEED certified. From a square
footage standpoint, 38 percent of
commercial office space in the U.S.
is green certified. These are both
slightly ahead of last year’s totals.
The research also identified an
interesting trend in terms of the
impact of municipal energy-disclo-
sure regulations on green building
adoption.
Rendering by Tryba Architects for Trammell Crow Co.
A living green wall planned for the lobby of Trammell Crow Co.’s Riverview at 1700 Platte Street will be approximately 420 square feet, the largest such installation in Colorado.
Simon Gordon
Managing director,
asset services,
CBRE, Denver