Home > Buildings & Plants > Real Estate/Multifamily > Commercial Real Estate > BOMA International Promotes and Facilitates Energy Efficiency in Commercial Real Estate

BOMA International Promotes and Facilitates Energy Efficiency in Commercial Real Estate

BOMA 7-Point Challenge

In July 2007, BOMA International launched its Market Transformation Energy Plan and 7-Point Challenge . The Challenge encourages members to achieve seven "points" that will ultimately help reduce a building's energy consumption, driven by the first point — achieving a 30% decrease in energy consumption (compared to an average building as measured in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager) by 2012.

Members use Portfolio Manager to track their progress. In addition, BOMA developed resources for members to meet the points and makes them available via educational programs, meetings, local associations, and its Web site.

More than 100 organizations have endorsed the challenge, including leading real estate firms representing 2 billion square feet, as well as BOMA local associations, who are engaging local governments and have launched their own related challenges. If all BOMA members collectively reduce consumption by 30% compared to an average building, they will avoid 120 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to removing 12 million cars from the roads.

BOMA Green Lease Guide

In 2008, BOMA International released its Guide to Writing a Commercial Real Estate Lease, Including Green Lease Language, known as the BOMA Green Lease Guide , which features instructions to help owners and managers write energy efficient and sustainable practices into leases. The guide addresses common barriers to greener operations, especially energy efficiency, in multi-tenant buildings and enables commercial real estate practitioners to more easily:

• Maintain an efficient, green building through operations and management practices
• Educate brokers and prospective tenants about what it means to occupy a high performance building
• Communicate the responsibilities of all parties in the ongoing efforts to keep the building efficient

To promote widespread adoption, the documents build off the widely-used 2005 Guide to Writing a Commercial Real Estate Lease and include clear footnotes that give answers to tough lease topics. The guide includes tenant responsibilities, pass-through provisions, ENERGY STAR certification notations, and a CD with the model lease documents for easy adaption to specific needs.

BOMA Energy Performance Contracting Model

BOMA International and the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) developed the BOMA Energy Performance Contracting (BEPC) model , a groundbreaking model contract and supporting documents that allow building owners and operators to execute sophisticated energy efficiency retrofits to existing buildings. BOMA and CCI, in collaboration with major real estate companies and energy service companies (ESCOs), identified the historical barriers to energy efficiency investment in the commercial real estate sector and developed a standardized, user-friendly contracting model that allows building owners and operators to successfully execute larger, more sophisticated retrofits and bring greater operational improvements in investment real estate.

BOMA 360 Performance Program

In April 2009, BOMA International launched the BOMA 360 Performance Program to recognize the industry's best practices in building management and operations. The online self-assessment takes a holistic approach by evaluating all major areas of property performance, evaluating properties on six major components: building operations and management, life safety/security/risk management, training and education, energy, environmental/sustainability, and tenant relations/community involvement. It also benchmarks against industry standards, providing a tool that property professionals can use to demonstrate to owners, tenants and the commercial real estate community that their buildings are managed to the highest standards of excellence.