BOMA Makes Business Case for Green

DENVER-Pioneers who pushed the idea of green building practices found a lot more acceptance among building owners once they started emphasizing the practical business reasons for adopting a green approach, a theme that runs throughout this year’s annual BOMA International conference and office building show here. Speakers and panels at the group’s annual gathering, which runs through today, have been driving home the message that adopting environmentally friendly practices isn’t just a socially responsible course to follow, it offers practical and financial benefits to building owners.

In keeping with that theme, BOMA on Monday unveiled a standardized contract that building owners can use to reduce energy costs via retrofitting their buildings and at the same time finance those retrofits without placing additional debt on their buildings. The model contract, developed by BOMA in cooperation with the Clinton Climate Initiative, is an agreement between an energy service provider and a building owner in which the energy service provider guarantees to save the building owner a certain amount of money on energy costs each year by retrofitting a building. In return, the building owner agrees to pay the energy services provider out of the savings realized through the retrofit.

Brenna Walraven, BOMA International chairman and executive managing director of national property management for USAA Real Estate Co., explained in a press conference regarding the model contract that such energy performance contracting has been in place for decades in the government sector. But energy performance contracting has not caught on in the private sector because of a number of hurdles: Thus far it has been costly, time-consuming and difficult to finance.