Davida Heller / June 23, 2010 On Tuesday, June 8, The Urban Land Institute Climate Change, Land Use, and Energy Initiative hosted a forum at the recently retrofitted Empire State Building entitled Energy Finance for Real Estate.  The event was held on the 61^st floor of one of New York City’s most treasured buildings, which is in the process of receiving an extensive energy facelift as an extensive retrofit is underway.  From 7:30am to 5:30pm, building owners, lenders, investors, sustainability executives, and public officials hashed out topics including energy efficiency initiatives, government regulation, risk calculation and how to access capital in the retrofit market, of financing.  Essentially, the question on everyone’s mind was how to make energy improvements financially viable. During the first panel of the day about the current state of the commercial real Estate industry with regard to energy efficiency, Charles Leitner, the global head of RREEF explained, “Capital is looking for something new…the next trend.  Everybody who manages money has the responsibility to demonstrate financial performance.  Capital is part of the solution, not the problem.” Gregg Saunders, CFO of Codding Enterprises, who later presented a case study of his company’s work in Sonoma Mountain Village, says “Owners are really struggling on how to survive.” Other panels included The State of Energy Efficiency Markets, Financial Strategy Implementation, New Tools and Rules for Market Transformation, Implementing Finance Strategies, The Empire State Building Story, An Energy Finance Case Study, Making Energy Districts Work and a Bankers Roundtable about Unlocking Capital Markets with Bankers hosted by Climate Community’s founder Dan Cashdan. Anthony Malkin, President of Malkin Holdings, discussed the retrofit project currently underway at the Empire State Building with over $4 million projected in energy savings per year.  Windows were actually retrofitted inside the building, rather than taken off-site or replaced. The building is now the largest wireless unity. Every louver, radiator, fan, pump are all linked wirelessly to a DDC system operated and monitored out of Milwaukee to provide constant, real-time commissioning. While no one walked away with concrete answers for how to effectively finance energy efficiency within the real estate market, the event generated active, thought provoking discussion among the forum’s attendees.  A common point of discussion during the event was the current need for and lack of tangible data on energy retrofitting results from retrofitting, which would push forward substantial lending in the area, but in the meantime the demand for green building must come from the user, not the investor or the lender.  But, why can’t the investor or the lender educate others on the value of green building and energy efficiency? It seems a new definition of the term “value” is what is truly needed.  As green building practices, holistic approaches to business development, triple bottom line accounting and health issues come to light the “value” of a property can no longer simply be defined in financial terms, nor can the financial value only be applicable to monetary income. www.uli.org

--------------------------

Read the original post at The Climate Community.