SOFIA, BULGARIA-Commercial real estate professionals and government officials are pushing aggressively to implement green building standards in new construction throughout Bulgaria, according to Colliers International, which recently sponsored a cross-border conference here to assess sustainable development trends in Central and Eastern European. The event attracted several hundred attendees, including senior corporate figures from both Bulgarian and multinational companies angling to do business in the emerging country.

"It is necessary to build a common vision," Colliers official Gergana Grancharova said in her remarks to the audience, adding she believes that the introduction of modern construction standards throughout Europe by 2011 will hasten the changes. Grancharova says environmental design tenets are being incorporated into those revisions to fulfill green goals. "The time is right for the Bulgarian real estate sector to focus on sustainable development," she said.

Atanas Garov, managing director of Colliers International Bulgaria, said that proponents of green buildings in the country are not even waiting for the new guidelines to be in place to pursue such projects. "The development of a carbon-neutral project is already in progress in a resort on the Black Sea Coast," reported Garov, who predicts that even more ventures will be launched through the end of the decade. The Colliers team is already gearing up to accommodate such initiatives, says Garov, who further promoted the concept in his presentation, "Sustainable Development Pays Off."