LOS ANGELES — Over 95 percent of small office buildings are brown, according to a sustainability certification study by CBRE Group and Maastricht University.
The 2015 Green Building Adoption Index, a joint project of CBRE and Maastricht, found that 62.1 percent of office buildings in the U.S. greater than 500,000 square feet are considered “green” (holding either an EPA ENERGY STAR label, or the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification or both). In contrast, only 4.5 percent of all U.S. office buildings less than 100,000 square feet qualified as green.
“Our 2015 study confirmed that green building adoption has been primarily a big building, first-tier city phenomenon,” said David Pogue, CBRE’s global director of corporate responsibility.
Minneapolis led the city ranking for the second consecutive year, with 70.4 percent of all office space currently qualified as green. San Francisco boasts a 70 percent green office market while Chicago, at 63.4 percent, was third. Atlanta was fourth at 57.8 percent and Houston came in fifth at 52.9 percent.