Green finance workshops to sharpen your competitive edge

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A few days ago, we announced the kick-off of a series of workshops focusing on green finance and investment issues via our newsletter, Pacesetter (sign up here). We are posting it here, to update those blog readers who get their news via RSS feed and might not have signed up for our monthly newsletter, yet.

The US Green Building Council Northern California Chapter and law firm, Hanson Bridgett, have generously co-sponsored the seminar series, titled The Competitive Edge: Financial Tools for Green Building Investment.

Why the Competitive Edge?

We want to help you add more value to your marketplace. We’re convinced that there is a real need in the industry to understand how to approach analyzing the value-add of green strategies within real estate investments. So we worked with the US Green Building Council Northern California Chapter and Hanson Bridgett to organize courses that address the core of those issues:

• how to use the LEED rating system when analyzing project cash flows (and move beyond first costs)
• common investment analysis issues and tools for retrofits
• an approach for structuring the investment review of new and existing green buildings
• how A/E/C professionals can learn common investment analysis processes and terms to improve communication with property owners about design, construction, and budget issues.
• what to consider when assembling a portfolio or fund of green investment properties.

We believe that green finance and investment techniques represent the next level of skills that real estate professionals need to stay current with changes in the real estate market place. ‘

Since sustainable design can change the economics of a building, and there are many ways to go about creating a green building, finance and investment professionals need to know a good, and efficient, process for incorporating this information into their decision making.

Below are a complete list of courses as well as links to registration. Also, you can sign up and join our Pacesetter list, which will contain updates on these courses, too.

Competitive Edge Course Summary

• Course 1, “Investment Analysis of Green Buildings”, (March 3, 2010 - Register now) covers green investment underwriting skills that help professionals to quickly use the USGBC’s LEED-rating system in their decision-making. Full day seminar.
• Course 2, “Financial Considerations of Existing Building Retrofits”, (April 7, 2010) addresses the financial considerations related to energy efficiency retrofits, so that professionals can integrate the additional decision-making tools and analysis for making buildings more energy efficient. Full day seminar.
• Course 3, “Understanding and Communicating the Financial Case for A/E/C Professionals”, (April 28, 2010) gives architects, engineers and sustainability consultants an overview of the real estate investment analysis process, stressing how to use this information to ‘go beyond first costs’ in their conversations with owners about their green design and construction choices. Half day seminar.
• Course 4, “Raising the Bar: Green Investment Fund Strategies”, (May, 2010 - date to be announced) walks the real estate senior executive through the business and legal aspects of assembling a portfolio of green property investments so that they can create more strategic advantages for their firms via creating pools of green building investments for the real estate market.

Instructors: I’m pleased to be co-teaching these courses with David Longinotti, Partner at Hanson Bridgett.  Dave’s bio can be read here. You can check out my bio here.

To facilitate the best interaction, please note that seating is limited for all courses. Got any questions? Feel free to write us or call us at +1 (415) 655-6668. We’d love to see you there!

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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Get plugged in:

• Sign up for our list on our green finance training page, to get info on upcoming workshops, which go deeper into the green business case.
• Do you like this post? We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.
• You can contact us to discuss or initiate a project here.
• You can get Our Green Journey by email or via RSS.
• Sometimes you can see what we’re doing on Twitter.
• Photo credit: Flikr/manu chao by Michale.

Galley Eco Capital helps Helsinki to reduce carbon emissions

San Francisco-based sustainable finance consultancy Galley Eco Capital was announced as part of a winning team for the redevelopment of the Jatkasaari district in Helsinki, Finland, which will be an urban zone with low or no carbon emissions.

Sitra, the innovation agency of the Finnish government, revealed today that the winning team for their “Low2No” development design competition was made up of Arup, Saurbruch Hutton, Experientia and Galley Eco Capital. The multi-national team was selected out of 74 initial entries, for their “C_life – City as Living Factory of Ecology” project.

Galley Eco Capital  brings their unique perspective as an international sustainable finance consultancy with a focus on creating green and socially responsible finance and investment programs.  Galley Eco Capital’s work complemented the architectural and consumer behavioral aspects of Jatkasaari by contributing new ways for finance to transform both the district and Helsinki market, to positively impact people’s lives.

The competition jury stated that the innovative monetary/economic model presented contributed significantly to the team’s clear top-down as well as a bottom-up strategy for leveraging the Jätkäsaari opportunity, in the spirit of the Low2No challenge.

Sustainable finance for Jatkasaari and Helsinki

While other team members devised the design, energy and consumer behavioral strategies for the project, Galley Eco Capital’s responsibility was to create an economic and funding model, which would support the project by integrating traditional and socially-responsible capital sources and products at a regional market level and set the right incentives to achieve maximum effect in terms of emissions reduction, energy efficiency and resource savings.

Starting with a thorough analysis of Sitra’s environmental and socially-responsible real estate objectives, the Finnish climate change agenda, and Finland’s participation within the global environmental finance markets, Galley Eco Capital developed ways to create a reliable pipeline of green mortgage, environmental, energy and carbon finance capital for Jatkasaari.

These products would all seamlessly connect with the traditional Finnish financial network to form a holistic financial system. Delicate synthesis was also required to create a flexible market structure, which would monetize available sustainability benefits while adequately funding the Jatkasaari project throughout construction and operation.

About Galley Eco Capital

Using their expertise in designing and implementing sustainable finance and investment programs, Galley Eco Capital’s strategies help investors, lenders and regional governments to bridge traditional with green finance and efficiently monetize the available sustainability benefits embedded within their real estate and renewable energy initiatives.

Galley Eco Capital’s unique approach assures more successful solutions through the application of interaction design principles, driven by culturally-aware, user-centric perspectives and underpinned by long years of international real estate and capital markets experience.

The strategies help drive positive change by:

• developing debt and equity financing structures based upon the value-add contributed by sustainability and energy efficiency,
• synthesizing traditional with emerging green financial products into holistic financial solutions,
• sourcing and structuring incentives and government subsidies to offset program costs,
• designing and monitoring sustainable investment performance measurement to assure positive program impact

Over the next 6 years, the Jatkasaari district will be designed, constructed and opened to the public. From there, the sustainable ideals that govern its day-to-day life will act as a model and example for the rest of Helsinki, Finland and the world. Through Galley Eco Capital, San Francisco will be a vital part of this journey.

For more information on the Low2No project, or on Galley Eco Capital, contact Lisa Michelle Galley, Managing Principal, at +1 415 655 6668, or via email at “lisa at galleyecocapital dot com”.

Don’t Build a Certified Gas Guzzler

Some investors narrowly focus on obtaining the LEED-plaque without doing sufficient analysis of whether they are approving the right kinds of energy-savings features for their investment dollars.

And that can cost them more than they assume — here’s a real cautionary tale:

The GSA’s Federal Building in Youngstown, Ohio is highlighted in today’s NY Times as a LEED-certified gas guzzler. The barebones fact is that, despite achieving LEED-certification, the building failed to qualify for Energy Star rating, when its utility bills were assessed last year.

What did they do wrong?

The GSA focused on things like daylighting, native landscaping and a white roof. They also paid for a “gas guzzling cooling system” and didn’t funding enough “structural energy-saving features”.

What’s at stake for the real estate industry is the enormous investment of time and capital into creating green and energy efficient buildings, in order to avoid the potential appraisal risk tied to obsolescence now facing many conventional buildings.

The USGBC’s own research indicates that “a quarter of the new buildings that have been certified do not save as much energy as their designs predicted and that most do not track energy consumption once in use.”

In addition to possibly leaving an owner open to reputation damage from accusations of greenwashing, failing to make the right decisions about structural energy and water saving design could harm the viability of the green building investment in a few ways:

a) Wasted money: in our opinion, an investor operating an underperforming certified green building is still open to the appraisal risk that they were trying to avoid in the first place,

b) Breach of duty to your shareholders: in the opinion of some attorneys, the investor is breaching his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders for not taking sufficient steps to avert material risks to their investment.

b) An entre to litigation hell: in the opinion of some other attorneys, the green building’s subperformance can possibly leave the A/E/C partners possibly open to litigation related to the subperformance issues.

And on top of all of that, absolutely no one wants to be the operator who has to come up with a clever response for his investors because his firm is featured in the press as the owner/operator of a gas-guzzling green building. The damage from that sort of press is enough to outweigh any concerns about potential first cost fears on structural energy-saving features.

So if one of your partners or clients doesn’t see much value in paying for structural energy-savings features, hand them the story of Youngstown Ohio Federal Building.

Ask them if they’d like to see their name in the papers as the next owner of a LEED-certified asset that has been officially assessed as a gas-guzzler.

Thank you, Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy was a vigorous defender of “people, profit and planet” before any of us ever used the phrase “triple bottom line”.

Treehugger has compiled a series of tributes to this “progessive green champion” that is a worthwhile read and great history lesson for those who are new to the green finance and investment world.

Green real estate professionals owe Ted Kennedy a great debt of gratitude.

Our entire business would not even be imaginable, if he had not so persistently pushed for social and environmental justice over the many decades of his political career — long before the idea of a green economy existed.

If you are reading this post on the website (as opposed to by email), you can check out what might possibly be Ted Kennedy’s last great act for the sustainability movement — his endorsement of Barack Obama for president.

Photo credit: Flickr - diggersf

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