Page 265 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

SUSTAINABLE BROKERAGE 243

development will become the industry standard. Education is critical. What we call
our “sustainable brokerage toolbox” combines what we’ve learned from our three
internal educational components: research, internal information sharing, and inter-
departmental communication, and serves as the foundation for our outreach and client
services. The toolbox resources allow us, as brokers, to be advocates for sustainable
development in our professional associations as well as in the community at large. Our
toolbox also enhances and broadens our already rich scope of client information and
services.
Typically, when we broach the subject of sustainability with clients and potential
clients, the first questions they ask are: What is it? What will it do for me? and How
much does it cost? Our answers must be succinct, relevant, and helpful. With this
in mind, the first item in our toolbox is a set of talking points that provide a brief
yet convincing business case for high performance green building. Those talking points
include:

1 An overview of the LEED rating system.
2 A list of the major REITs investing in and corporations building to LEED standards.
3 Risk and reward categories.
4 A sampling of cost and benefit data.
These talking points are intended to provide specific information that captures atten-
tion and gets a larger conversation started.
A number of our clients are skeptical of businesses that claim to be “green” or
“sustainable.” They feel like anyone could claim it and market a product as such
without really having to back it up. We see this happening at both the local and
national levels, and we think that as green becomes more mainstream, skepticism is
warranted. Greenwashing and unsubstantiated claims of sustainable development
hurt consumers as well as developers of truly sustainable projects and make it diffi-
cult to figure out what is what and who is really doing what they say they are doing.
We view this confusion and skepticism as an excellent opportunity to dig into our
toolbox and provide our clients and potential clients with information on LEED.
LEED standardizes sustainable development process, practice, and performance cri-
teria, and awards points for meaningful accomplishments over a broad set of criteria.
The standardization aspect and broad scope, plus the fact that LEED is the most
widely accepted and utilized high-performance green building rating system, appeal
to skeptics because they see how LEED certification means something significantly
more than claims of greenness, especially because certification is by an independent
third party.
To be honest, our clients are primarily interested in the economic and social aspects
of sustainable development. The environmental aspects are, for most, an added bonus
rather than the main reason to change the way they do things. When we tell people
BOMA International director Brenna S. Walraven predicted a competitive disadvan-
tage in five years or less, maybe in as little as two years, for buildings that are not