March 12, 2009 /

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.Â If you follow responsible property investing like we do,Â 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.Â 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.