"We are at the tipping point; it happened sometime during the fourth quarter of 2007," he told an audience of 250 at RealShare Atlanta on Tuesday. "Every week that goes by someone else is committing to it," he explained. "It's picking up speed on a weekly basis."
And this may be, O'Brien added, because even with risks involved, corporate America in general--and the real estate industry in particular--knows it is here to stay. "Most people who own real estate are risk adverse, and rightly so. Somewhere in the fourth quarter of '07 there was the realization that the risk of going green is far outweighing any cost associated with going green," he said.
The biggest risk of not going green, O'Brien explained, is that by default you will be considered a brown building. "In the US we love red states versus blue states; we are going to love green building versus brown buildings."
According to O'Brien, several factors led to the tipping point: property owners are seeking an advantage; tenants and users are facing pressures and mandates from the C-suite to look for green space; capital sources are favoring green and consider it better collateral; and society as whole is moving toward a green society.
"The green building world as I seen it here in Atlanta, and probably the rest of the world, really has three dimensions to it," he explained. The dimensions are the design of green, the construction of green and the value of green, he added.
"Architects, engineers and design professionals are trying to create projects that reduce the negative impact of buildings on the environment and the people," O'Brien stated. "Atlanta is blessed with some really good design firms. If you think about the design of green, it is changing constantly and will never end. Some of the things we are going to come up with are going to shock us probably in the next 10 to 15 years."
However, the design of green is not enough. "If you design and construct to green standards, but are not maintaining or operating to those standards the idea of being a green building goes out the window," he cautioned.
The RealShare Conference Series is produced by New York City-based Real Estate Media, which also publishes Real Estate Forum, Real Estate Florida, and GlobeSt.com.
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