Page 137 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

114 THE BUSINESS CASE FOR GREEN BUILDINGS

Photography by Stefan Behnisch.

Financing Green Projects

Whether public or private, raising money for new and renovated projects is always an
issue. For private developers, raising both debt and equity capital is typically the chal-
lenge. The rise of socially responsible property investing promises to reward those
developers who build green.
Investing in green buildings has begun to attract considerable attention as a form of
responsible property investing (RPI), a practice which is growing faster than overall
investing. One expert, Professor Gary Pivo, puts it this way in a 2007 report on a sur-
vey of 189 leading real estate executives in the United States:*

There is considerable interest and activity in RPI in America’s real estate investment
organizations. It reflects the commitment to sustainability and corporate social
responsibility that appears to be taking hold in the business world at large. As CoreNet

*Gary Pivo, “Responsible Property Investing: A Survey of American Executives,” www.u.arizona.edu/~gpivo/
RPI%20Survey%20Brief.pdf, accessed April 23, 2008.