Over a third of Tampa Bay office space considered green Nationally, 62% of large buildings qualify as green, compared to less than 5% of small buildings
Miami – June 25, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — With over a third of its office space considered “green,” Tampa Bay ranked 17th out of 30 markets on the 2015 Green Building Adoption Index, a joint project of CBRE Group, Inc. and Maastricht University. The Tampa Bay market made the largest leap in the survey this year, moving into 17th position, up from 22nd.
For the purposes of this report, “green” office space is defined as holding either an EPA ENERGY STAR label, U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) full-building LEED certification or both. Using square feet as a measure, 31.55% of Tampa’s office market is “green,” up from only 27% a year before. This 4.6% increase is the highest year-over-year improvement noted in the study. Another significant observation is the very high ratio of buildings holding LEED designation and the square footage those buildings represent. While only 2.1% of the building stock in Tampa Bay has the LEED designation, these buildings contain 11.1% of the total market square footage. This better than 5 to 1 ratio is the highest in our study and demonstrates that the green building market is a big building market in Tampa.
Tampa’s LEED-certified buildings were active in 2014 with 64 transactions totaling more than 1.4 million square feet. Of the top 25 leases signed this year, five occurred in LEED buildings. The largest of the five deals was the second-largest transaction overall for the city and third-largest across all of Tampa Bay.
Overall, Minneapolis led the Green Building Adoption Index’s city ranking for the second consecutive year, with 70.4 percent of all office space currently qualified as green, down from 77.0 percent in 2014. San Francisco, again in second place, significantly closed the gap and now boasts a 70 percent green market, up from 67.2 percent in 2014. Chicago, at 63.4 percent, was third, while Atlanta (57.8 percent) and Houston (52.9 percent) swapped positions at fourth and fifth. The top 10 cities on the 2014 list all retained a place on the 2015 list.
The study also found that owners of small buildings have an opportunity to differentiate themselves by implementing energy-efficient practices, due to a significant gap between large and small office buildings in achieving sustainability certification. For example, 62.1 percent of office buildings in the U.S. greater than 500,000 square feet are considered green. In contrast, only 4.5 percent of all U.S. office buildings less than 100,000 square feet qualified as green.
“Our 2015 study confirmed that green building adoption has been primarily a big building, first-tier city phenomenon,” said David Pogue, CBRE’s global director of corporate responsibility. “It would appear that many smaller buildings in the majority of large markets still have an opportunity to be ‘best in class’ among their peer set by achieving these certifications.”
Executed in close collaboration with the USGBC and CBRE Research, this is the second release of the annual Green Building Adoption Index. Based on a rigorous methodology, the Index shows the growth of ENERGY STAR- and LEED-certified space for the 30 largest U.S. office markets, both in aggregate and in individual markets, over the previous 10 years.
2015 Green Building Adoption Index
Top 10 Green Office Markets
| Market | 2015 Rank | 2015 % | 2014 Rank |
| Minneapolis | 1 | 70.4 | 1 |
| San Francisco | 2 | 70.0 | 2 |
| Chicago | 3 | 63.4 | 3 |
| Atlanta | 4 | 57.8 | 5 |
| Houston | 5 | 52.9 | 4 |
| Denver | 6 | 48.7 | 7 |
| Los Angeles | 7 | 47.1 | 6 |
| Washington, D.C. | 8 | 42.3 | 10 |
| Miami | 9 | 41.6 | 9 |
| Seattle | 10 | 40.1 | 8 |
About CBRE Group, Inc.
CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBG), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company headquartered in Los Angeles, is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm (in terms of 2014 revenue). The Company has more than 52,000 employees (excluding affiliates), and serves real estate owners, investors and occupiers through more than 370 offices (excluding affiliates) worldwide. CBRE offers strategic advice and execution for property sales and leasing; corporate services; property, facilities and project management; mortgage banking; appraisal and valuation; development services; investment management; and research and consulting. Please visit our website at www.cbre.com.
Contact:
Elizabeth Cross
305.428.6373
elizabeth.cross (at) cbre (dot) com
Melinda Sherwood
305.381.6453
melinda.sherwood (at) cbre (dot) com
