Key events on energy efficiency finance and triple bottom line investing
Meet us at the the following events. We’ll be presenting about:
- energy efficiency financing
- responsible property investment metrics for high performance portfolios
- taking the green economy to the next level
In the weeks ahead, Lisa Michelle Galley will be featured at a number of key industry conferences. The topics covered by Lisa and other leading voices in the sustainable investment community will highlight the latest trends and provide a valuable forum to learn about innovative solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing the green building and finance sectors.
Presentation on Energy Efficiency Financing
GSMI -The Sustainable Buildings Series: Retrofits
October 21, 2009; 11:15am – 12pm, Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF
Lisa will cover the key considerations for different types of energy efficiency financing. From there she will talk about how owners can more effectively coordinate their energy efficiency financing efforts across their portfolios. Lisa will be co-presenting with Peter Liu of New Resource Bank.
Presentation on Metrics for High-Performance Portfolios
Responsible Property Investing Council: 2009 ULI Fall Meeting
November 04, 2009 – Joint session of RPI and Sustainable Development Councils
Moscone Center South, San Francisco
Along with co-presenters David Wood, of the Responsible Property Investment Center and Jean Rogers of ARUP, Lisa will offer fresh insights and recommendations developed in a year long study of the development and application of responsible property investing metrics on institutional real estate portfolios. Lisa and Jean will discuss how the real estate investment ‘system’ has been impacted by sustainability.
Taking the Green Economy to the next level
Sustainable Industries Economic Forum in San Francisco
November 19, 2009; 9:30am -10:15am
St. Regis Hotel, San Francisco
Lisa will join a panel of industry leaders including Paul Hawken, author and CEO of the Pax Engineering Group, to discuss some of the most challenging aspect of successfully implementing triple bottom line solutions and how we can take the green economy forward. The event will offer valuable perspective on growing strategic partnerships as a core aspect of sustainable business.
If you would like to meet us at any of these events, please email us info@galleyecocapital.com
News about future events is available through our website.
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Essential Downloads & Reading for Triple Bottom Line Returns
Feeling behind on your green building finance and investment reading? Well, we thought that Friday is the perfect day to lick your fingers and start turning some pages!
Here are a few must reads we’ve enjoyed over the recent past here at Galley Eco Capital. We consider these to be the real deal –Â taking you beyond the cocktail party level to making a positive difference on your next green and/or triple bottom line real estate transaction.
Green Building Through Integrated Design
I have been WAY overdue in mentioning this one — mainly because I’ve found myself picking it up repeatedly. Jerry Yudelson (a faithful Our Green Journey subscriber and commentor!) has been out with this latest book for a short while now, which shows that integrated design does not have to mean a cost premium. We especially liked his walking readers through the mechanics of payback and life cycle analysis step by step. This is a sustainable design book that is as good for business professionals as it is for the architects and engineers. Link to this book’s Amazon page here.
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Investment Returns from Responsible Property Investments: Energy Efficient, Transit-oriented and Urban Regeneration Office Properties in the US from 1998-2008
This one, from Gary Pivo and Jeffrey Fisher, is just out and very critical for those needing hard data to support triple bottom line investment strategies for real estate. If you follow responsible property investing like we do, then you know that its everlasting mission is to prove that the application of social responsibility to institutional real estate investing results in equal if not better returns. In this working paper, the authors study how properties built near mass transit, those which undergo regeneration, and energy efficient projects deliver equal if not better returns over the previous ten year period. Download this working paper from the Responsible Property Investing Center here.
See related posts and resources:
Green Building Drives Triple Bottom Line Advantages
Pension Funds Green Agendas Continue - You Prepared?
John Knott & Andrew Nelson Show RPI in Action
Part 5: Green Building Drives Triple Bottom Line Advantages
How do you achieve environmental and social progress within your real estate investment platform while delivering market rates of returns?
In Part 5 of our Special Series on the Green Building Finance & Investment Forum – New York, co-sponsored by Galley Eco Capital, triple bottom line investors discuss how and why their environmental and socially-driven investment vehicles meet and sometimes exceed market rates of return, and their investor’s expectations.
The panel consisted of Lisa Lafave of HOOPP (Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan), Brandon Mitchell of Full Spectrum NY, Nicholas Stolatis of TIAA-CREF Global Real Estate, and Stephanie Wiggins of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. The panel was moderated by Lisa Hagerman, Ph.D., of the Institute for Responsible Investment at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.
Green building is a key ingredient within triple bottom line investing
Pension funds invest according to input from a broad universe of stakeholders. Everyone from their pensioners, to employees and major investors has a particular reason to request that the fund focus on all three bottom lines simultaneously. And absolutely no one gives an inch on returns. At the conference, these investors reported that there is a lot a variation in how triple bottom line investing can look in different companies and different regions. However, green building was a key ingredient within nearly every type of triple bottom line initiative that they reported.
At the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, which has financed more than 80,000 affordable and moderately priced housing units, major investors require the trust to meet CSR criteria, ensuring that investments are handled in a socially optimal manner.
For TIAA-CREF, which has a direct real estate portfolio of over $30 billion, the focus is on connecting environmental responsibility with asset competitiveness. Major tenants want LEED certified space, and they are not willing to pay a premium for it. Failing to address these tenant requirements will decrease TIAA-CREF’s asset competitiveness and decrease portfolio performance.
“Those that don’t operate green will be obvious, and they will go the way of the dodo bird” - Nicholas Stolatis, TIAA-CREF Global Real Estate
In order to limit future downward exposure and protect portfolio value, HOOPP portfolio manager Lisa Lafave calculates risk-adjusted returns, accounting for social and environmental risk. For HOOPP, environmental risk equals the risk of not being green, and losing asset competitiveness. By accounting for this risk and greening their portfolio, HOOPP expects to see higher occupancy, better tenant retention, shorter lease-up periods, and in certain markets, higher rents.
Experienced developers deliver great results with triple bottom line investing
The Kalahari in Harlem, developed by Full Spectrum of NY
Many investors and lenders have preconceived notions that socially-responsible investment initiatives automatically deliver below market returns. However, there are a number of firms that are redefining socially-responsible investment vehicles, while at the same time exceeding investor expectations.
Brandon Mitchell, Director of Development at Full Spectrum of NY, explains how his firm is doing well by doing good. Full Spectrum is a mission-driven organization, that seeks to reduce the housing burden in low-income communities, while also creating opportunities for local businesses to create jobs and wealth. They work with institutional-grade debt and equity investors, and focus on sustainable development because its good for the environment, the community, and their pocket book.
Full Spectrum of NY creates a product that few other development firms consider- they create environmentally and socially sustainable mixed-use, mixed-income developments in low-income and emerging communities. They have developed several successful projects in Harlem, including the Kalihari, a 249-unit condominium building with 50% affordable and 50% market rate units, designed to use 50% less energy than a conventionally-built structure.
Key features of the Kalahari include:
- A panelized wall system to reduce construction costs and shorten the development timeline
- A tight building envelope and energy star appliances for high energy efficiency, and renewable energy from building-integrated solar panels
- A green roof for storm water retention, tenant green space, and urban heat island mitigation
- Submicron air filters to improve indoor air quality
- After school programming for children, supporting working parents
- A creative art center, with a focus on African and Latino art
By creating mixed-income housing, Full Spectrum of NY can access incentives and grants accounting for more than 25% of their project capital needs. In addition, the firm is able to secure a low cost of capital for the remaining capital requirements. By utilizing sustainable building strategies, they lower operating costs and hedge against future energy and water price risk, a great selling point for residential buyers and commercial tenants.
This development strategy has worked well- on a recently completed development, Full Spectrum achieved a per square foot selling price for the market-rate residential units that was $125 to $350 higher than anticipated. This significantly exceeded the expectations of project investors, supporting Full Spectrum’s investment thesis:
“Integrating social and environmental factors into our projects has not only meant that the communities we build in benefit, but our investors benefit, and the homeowners benefit- we are creating a platform that allows us to redefine how we think about real estate and sustainability” - Brandon Mitchell, Full Spectrum NY
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If you liked this post and would like to receive more, please subscribe. Don’t forget to read the other installments of our Special Series on the Green Building Finance and Investment Forum - New York. As always, we welcome your comments.
Pension Funds Green Agendas Continue — You Prepared?
Are you on top of your institutional investors’ green agenda?
Today’s post focuses on a “state of SRI” article sent over by Green Journey reader and blogger, Ari Frankel.
It hints rather loudly to American real estate investors and developers that they need to step up their green investment and development programs — or else find themselves less competitive with funding from the ‘Big Money’ institutional investors.
Seems that an increasing number of pension funds worldwide are pushing for a more explicit environmental agenda within their investment holdings, according to the New York Times earlier this week. Nothing new there, for the deep green crowd, but great to know, in any event. And the Times gets kudos for being GPC — geopolitically correct — by citing the leadership of several European and one American pension fund in green investing (such factoids hammer at the “reinvent the green wheel” bias we have here in the US). It points to the United Nation’s Principle’s of Responsible Investment (to which we are a happy signatory) as now representing 381 members and $14 trillion in assets.
The Times also asks the necessary question of whether Big Money is really creating positive environmental and social change. For example, they point out that no one really knows if the pension funds’ efforts are really creating the impact they profess to seek. Or if all of the funds with a green agenda as committed as they claim (gasp!) .
HOWEVER, it was pretty surprising that the usually sharp, pro-SRI NY Times failed to dedicate one pixel of ink to the corporate watchdogs like CERES or BSR — THE acknowledged leaders in pushing corporations and institutional investors to adopt ESG (environmental, social, governance) principles within their business and investing activities. CERES has an extensive list of tools and publications documenting their efforts to educate the investment community on the value a green agenda brings. And you can take a lookat our previous coverage of CERES’ video on their engagement work as well.
Nonetheless, good takeaways and a not-so-subtle warning are there between the lines for commercial real estate. The point? Simply, most of these Big Money investors have some amount of their funds allocated to real estate. If they haven’t tailored their real estate investment criteria towards green real estate, yet, then they are bound to do it soon.
Sooner or later, you are going to call on your pension fund investors for your normal performance meetings and, in addition to the regular good dialogue, you are going to be handed more requests – possibly in the form of more compliance reporting, audit checklists, risk assessments, engagement meetings, what have you.
Will you be ready?
John Knott and Andrew Nelson Show RPI in Action
Greetings from the Miami International Airport Island Grill, which — given my options — is currently rocketing up my three item list of decent airport food!
I had the opportunity to attend a great talk by John Knott, of the Noisette Company, here at the ULI Fall Meeting. Hearing him reminded me that there are a couple of great reports currently in circulation that Green Journey readers should be reading, if you haven’t already obtained them through your other channels. They are must reads for all of us who want to use responsible property investing — incorporating applied approaches to social responsibility within our professional real estate activities.
Item 1: The Noisette Company Sustainability Report
John Knott and his company’s work with the Navy Yards Project is a great living case study in revitalization with social justice at its core. Another cool point to keep in mind as you read is that the Noisette Company is a 100 year old family development business. Knott made it clear that the sustainable and socially conscious principles that they apply are not anything new-fangled or exotic, as many investors fear about sustainable real estate. The approaches are actually as old school as they come.
Item 2: RREEF Research Report: Globalization and Global Trends in Green Real Estate Investment
All of my USGBC-NCC colleagues out there remember the great talk RREEF’s Andrew Nelson gave about global greening trends at our chapter meeting earlier this month. Well, that upcoming report he alluded to is now finally out and official. Download / read / apply / pass it along.
