HOUSTON – Houston ranked No. 4 among the top U.S. cities with the highest percentage of green commercial space, according to the 2014 Green Building Adoption Index, a joint project of CBRE Group and Maastricht University of The Netherlands.
Minneapolis, where 77.0% of the commercial real estate space is certified as green, was No. 1.
It was followed by San Francisco (67.2%), Chicago (62.1%), Houston (54.8%) and Atlanta (54.1%). Houston ranked at number four on the list with 54.8 percent of commercial real estate certified as green.
“Houston office building managers and owners have designed and retrofitted facilities to be well-suited for the age of energy efficiency,” said Mark Taylor, Senior Managing Director of CBRE’s Houston office. “Since Houston is the energy capital of the world, sustainability is paramount to all aspects of our economy. This is evident in the way real estate has been consistently managed on a local level, and we will certainly see this trend continue in the years to come.”
The study also finds that across the U.S., green commercial real estate has increased significantly since 2005.
Currently, 54.8% of commercial square footage in Houston holds the EPA Energy Star label, the USGBC LEED distinction or both. In recent years, oil and gas and other extraction-related firms headquartered in the market have actively embraced sustainable practices to demonstrate environmental stewardship. Additionally, Houston passed Resolution 2004-15 in 2004 requiring that city-owned buildings larger than 10,000 feet pursue LEED standards to the greatest extent possible. These factors combined rank Houston fourth in the U.S. for the amount of Energy Star-labeled space and third in the amount of LEED certified space.