More than half of respondents, 53%, said that they currently have a sustainability policy while another 23% of respondents are developing a policy. Still, "We are seeing a pretty wide variety," says Dan Probst, chairman of the global environmental sustainability board at JLL. Some companies are just beginning to look at sustainability issues while "others are a little bit further along and have been working for a couple of years and created internal programs," he says. The findings echo a survey done by Real Estate Media in September 2007, which showed that the majority of the 392 professionals who responded have a commitment to being green, but that companies still have a long way to go, such as having performance monitoring, training and separate line items in their budgets.

In the JLL survey, more than half of all respondents, 52%, said energy efficiency was one of their main priorities when it comes to sustainability. Additionally, 55% of survey respondents have set policies in the past five years to reduce energy consumption, according to a survey report. "For any corporation, particularly if you are not a manufacturer, 40% to 50% of your total carbon emissions are probably associated with your real estate occupancy," Probst says. When a new building is constructed, there is an extra cost to make it "green" but "that premium has diminished quite a bit," he says. Making an existing building more "green" has a "pretty attractive payback" as those buildings "typically have greatly reduced energy costs of 30% to 40%," Probst says.