One caveat: the survey was of only 48 people who are in charge of sustainability for their companies. I think that sample size is too small. And, given these folks’ role in the organization, I am afraid their viewpoint is a bit slanted so to speak. But there are lessons to be learned.

My takeaways included:

+ “The green workforce is the general workforce.” – they believed that sustainability would be integrated into existing roles and job descriptions as a prerequisite for employability: Jobs in the future, respondents thought, will require people to bring a certain basic level of familiarity with sustainability issues and competence in skills related to sustainability to the table.

Interesting. I’ve never heard it put quite that way, but I agree with the premise wholeheartedly.

+ “Sustainable products can be competitive – with the right marketplace approach.”

Thumbs up from me.

+ “Sustainability’s bottom-line results might be better if you broaden your view of ROI.” – But to improve its performance, a company needs to do more than reap an immediate financial ROI on its sustainability initiatives. It also needs to consider managing risk, building its brand and reputation, complying with regulatory requirements, and investing in developing future products and services that will be viable in a world where sustainability plays a greater role in driving buying decisions.

There are definitely qualitative benefits that should be considered that are difficult to incllude in your CFO’s spreadsheet.

+ Primary owner of sustainability efforts? COO was 6%, Head of Environmental Health and Safety 6%, Board of Directors 4%, CFO 2%, other = 91%.

Two things: 1) It’s odd that Deloitte did not list Chief Sustainability Officer as one of the options (they were part of the others), and 2) quite obviously the multiple people selected as an owner leads to a lack of accountability, which is not good for results.

+ There is a clear lack of understanding between these sustainability owners and the ARRA funds that are available to them.

That’s bad news for policy makers and even worse news for those heading up these sustainability efforts. I would have guessed the sustainability folks would have been more aggressive in understanding the grants, tax credits, tax deductions, and rebates that are available to them and their projects.

+ Energy efficiency was the across-the-board winner as the most important environmental issue to the business.

EE rated 9 on a scale from 1 to 10 in importance and was the leader in every business sector. Wow, that’s impressive and surprising at the same time. Efficiency does not get near the publicity as other answers like alternative energy and transportation. Someone has been listening and reading this blog.

Google initially announced its intentions with PowerMeter in early 2009.

Cisco has also recently announced its intentions to be in the Home Energy Management space.

Below is a picture of the Cisco product.

The installations were to be performed by a company call SunRun. On Tuesday, June 29th, SunRun announced it closed a Series C round of funding for $55 million led by Sequoia Capital and joined by existing investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital.

For those of you not wise to the VC world, Sequoia is the biggest and baddest Silicon Valley VC that there is. You may have heard of prior early stage investments like Google, YouTube, Apple, Yahoo!, and Cisco, among others.

Original investor, Accel Partners, is bigtime too with investments in Facebook, Veritas, and comscore.

Similarly, a recent report from Matter Network states that Goldman Sachs has begun covering the solar sector, including First Solar and SunPower.

We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about green investment, so if you’d like read more here.

Underlying image CC licensed by Flickr user supafly.

Green Squared admission… I am a Top Chef fan.

So, I was particularly intrigued that Top Chef Master Rick Bayless had two of the highest certifications with Frontera Grill and Topolobampo.

I love the notion that they are trying to aggregate data on the energy savings that are being retrofitted.

More interesting to me is the discussion further into the article that touches on what might be Deutsche Bank’s ultimate motivation.

Mr. Hattem, who said Deutsche Bank would have no proprietary stake in the data, hopes that lenders will not only finance more retrofits as a result of the project, but also use the information to create a new securitizations market.

“The idea here is that if underwriters can determine a predictable savings from retrofits,” he said, “then they can create a financial instrument backed by these savings to sell on the open market.”

Now this type of thinking will jump start the retrofit business as capital for the improvement projects has always been the biggest impediment.

I also found this quote from a project manager at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and a member of the advisory committee spot on:

“There is an almost universal lack of understanding of building energy usage,” said Luke Falk.

I agree wholeheartedly, Luke. More building owners and managers need to wrap their heads around that usage and controlling the costs surrounding it.

If you forgot what PACE financing is, check out our earlier blog post titled, “What is PACE financing?”.

A recent study from Johnson Controls estimates that today’s nascent U.S. commercial PACE market could represent around $18 billion each year.

As these guys aptly asked, how far will the PACE model spread and how deeply will it affect the business marketplace is today an open question.

Why?

Well, we only recommend retrofit projects that payback in a short time frame in operating savings. Those operating savings result in increased Net Operating Income (NOI) for commercial building owners. That increased NOI results in increased property value.

How?

The income approach is one of three primary approaches to appraising commercial properties. In the income approach to appraisal, the value is determined on the stream of NOI that an investor will receive as a result of owning the property. As such, the retrofit that lowers operating costs, increases NOI, and increases appraised value.

There are multiple studies supporting this benefit in the real world.

In anticipation of the day, I offer you the following articles for good reading:

Green leader Whole Foods plans to go greener
The Company has plans to reduce its energy consumption 25 percent per square foot during the next five years.

Save energy and money by retrofitting lighting
Retrofits using fluorescent technologies reduce lighting energy consumption (kWh) and lighting demand (kW) as much as 50 percent.

It also catches me up on a bunch of stuff that I wanted to blog about, but ran out of time!

They are planning to open 30 total new stores in 2010. They have almost 1100 stores nationwide.

And even better, they are also remodeling 85 current portfolio stores in 2010. I wonder if any will be LEED EB?

They have 71 stores nationwide built according to a prototype that received LEED-precertification at the Silver level from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Kohl’s is also the #2 purchaser of green power in the US (1.367 billion kilowatt hours), second only to Intel. They are however, the largest purchaser that account for 100% of their electricity usage.

Kudos, Kohl’s!

This study from 2009 was a joint project between CBRE and the University of San Diego which focused on 154 buildings in ten widely dispersed geographic markets. All the buildings had earned an Energy Star label and ranked in the top 25th percentile of comparable Energy Star buildings in either 2008 or 2009.

Here is a summary of the most interesting findings, outside of the typical higher rent rolls, lower vacancy, and lower energy costs:

• Consistently the data proved that even a single point improvement in the Energy Star score equates to a 80 percent to 100 percent improvement in energy usage. In other words, an improvement from 50 to 80 in Energy Star score would result in about 25 percent reduction in energy usage and costs.

• Separately metered tenants average 21 percent lower utility costs compared with those occupying buildings with a consolidated meter – From my graduate school business professor, “That which gets measured, get’s done!”



• More than 55 percent of respondents experienced reduced employee sick days in “green” spaces over their previous locations, with an average reduction of 2.88 days. When extrapolated to employee compensation levels, the economic benefit translates to slightly more than $5 per square foot, a significant number.

• When expanded to general productivity, rather than just employee productivity, the improvement was 4.88 percent. Again, applying the self-reported compensation levels to this percentage, we can predict an additional economic benefit of nearly $20 per square foot for the typical occupant.

• Overall, the study indicates that occupants gain on average nearly $25 per square foot in economic benefit from a “green” space, or more than 85 percent of the average rental rate.

More evidence that investing in greening your property yields greater greenbacks in your pocket. For those of you who haven’t heard the story of our company name, the above sentence is the backbone of that story…

Green Squared provides comprehensive turnkey energy efficiency solutions to owners, operators and occupants of commercial properties of all types in a manner which accomplishes two very different, but very important “green” objectives: (i) “green”, as in environmental sustainability, and (ii) “green”, as in cost savings. That’s Green²; that’s Green Squared!