Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a vital part of maintaining your building’s value and appeal. With green certifications leading to higher rental premiums, regularly assessing and refining your environmental practices is key to ensuring your building deserves a pivoted ‘green’ badge, especially when ‘green’ equals higher income.
Rental premiums for green-certified, class-A office buildings in the US and Canada average +7.1%. The UK numbers are equally impressive—renters are willing to pay +11.6% more for eco-friendly offices in London.
Tenants and occupants are increasingly eager to understand a building’s sustainability credentials as much as its square footage. So, what does it take to maintain a sustainable building in 2024?
What Makes a Building Sustainable in 2024?
A sustainable building is designed to minimize environmental impact through eco-friendly materials and tools and sustainable maintenance practices. However, no single tick-box determines whether a building is sustainable. Frameworks like LEED and BREEAM assess factors like:
- Energy efficiency: How a building uses and saves energy.
- Materials: The use of materials that are sustainably produced and installed.
- Water efficiency: Reducing water consumption, such as using low-flow fixtures and harvesting rainwater.
- Health and wellbeing: The design positively impacts tenants, such as harnessing natural light and fresh air.
- Waste: Minimizing waste, including the waste produced during the building’s construction.
- Land use: How the building uses green spaces to promote its ecological value and protect wildlife.
Top 7 Sustainable Building Practices for 2024
1. Energy-Efficient Building Design
Energy efficiency is a non-negotiable for any ESG strategy, but it also enables property managers to lower running costs, slash utility bills, and avoid costly and frequent equipment replacement.
Invest in efficient appliances (ideally ENERGY-STAR certified), inspect your LED lighting fixtures to ensure optimal performance, and periodically check your roofing and insulation to improve your building’s energy efficiency. If you’re installing heating, cooling, or HVAC systems, remember that these can also be scrutinized for their energy performance.
Choose HVAC systems based on critical metrics such as SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) and AFUE (Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency). Ideally, you would want a SEER of 13 to 21 or higher and an AFUE of 90% or higher. Schedule routine HVAC systems inspections and frequently replace air filters to maintain airflow efficiency.
2. Renewable Energy Integration
If your building is powered by renewable energy sources, that’s a great head start. However, you must also maintain these systems to maximize efficiency. Ensure your maintenance team regularly cleans and inspects your solar panels, as dust and debris can affect energy output. If you don’t have solar panels installed, consider investing in these to reduce your carbon footprint and slash long-term costs.
Integrate your renewable energy systems with your building’s energy management systems so that renewable energy is used optimally, stored when possible, and supplemented with grid power only when necessary. You can also consider implementing battery storage solutions to store excess energy and use it for peak demand periods.
3. Water Conservation and Management
Water conservation and management are crucial for ensuring clean water availability and lowering the carbon emissions and costs associated with water treatment and distribution. In addition to using efficient appliances and fixtures, you’ll need to monitor water systems to ensure they function as planned and are not leaking or faulty.
Advanced water management solution like Wint Water Intelligence enables you to continuously and accurately monitor water consumption. You can then implement effective strategies to minimize water usage and waste, reducing carbon emissions. Leveraging AI and signal processing, Wint also detects leaks in real-time and automatically stops them at the source, helping you solve leaks and avoid the costly consequences of emergency water damage.
4. Sustainable Materials and Resources
Sustainable materials are a requirement for most building energy ratings and certifications. While the choice of materials is made in the planning and construction stages, property maintenance and sustainability teams should be involved from the start and advocate for sustainable options.
If you aren’t involved in these decisions, consider collaborating with procurement teams to ensure that the materials chosen are sustainably sourced and durable. Popular and effective choices include:
- Low-carbon concrete.
- Recycled materials like glass and steel.
- Locally sourced materials.
You can also make eco-friendly swaps to improve your building’s sustainability ratings. For example, replace standard faucets, toilets, and showerheads with low-flow, water-efficient fixtures, substitute conventional paint with low-VOC paints, or invest in LED lightning across all building units.
5. Indoor Air Quality Management
Indoor air quality, or IAQ, is about identifying how to integrate proper ventilation and filtration into a building. Many green building certifications have specific IAQ requirements, such as minimum levels of outdoor air ventilation, low-emitting materials, or monitoring systems, to ensure consistently high air quality standards in your building.
Regularly inspect HVAC systems and replace disposable filters with reusable and high-efficiency options. If your building undergoes renovation, ensure you use low-emitting materials. You can also install IAQ sensors to monitor air quality levels and adjust as needed.
6. Waste Reduction and Recycling
Recycling extends beyond putting garbage in the correct on-site bins- it’s a key component of waste management and requires precise planning.
The first step is to conduct an assessment or audit to identify waste and where you can reuse construction materials and recycle unusable debris. You can implement on-site recycling programs tailored to a specific waste stream based on the results. Ensure that materials like metal and concrete are diverted from landfills and repurposed.
7. Sustainable Landscaping
If your building site has green space, you may use a landscaper. Sustainable landscaping supports local ecosystems and creates functional and aesthetic outdoor spaces for tenants. Brief your third-party service provider so they know to use recycled and sustainable materials. You can even include biodiversity features like bird feeders, bat houses, or plants that promote ecological balance.
How to Measure the Success of Your Sustainable Building Practices
A great place to start when measuring the success of sustainable building practices is by considering certifications, which aren’t just for show. Following the framework for LEED and BREEAM helps you measure and prove that your building is energy and resource-efficient.
As part of these certifications, you’ll need to measure energy usage intensity (EUI), which tracks your building’s energy performance, consumption, and cost savings. These certifications also require continuous monitoring and optimization of water usage to ensure water efficiency and reduce environmental impact. You may also need to invest in assistance from third-party teams for other essential metrics, such as air quality levels and natural light utilization.
Prioritize Water Conservation for Sustainability Success
Sustainability is essential throughout the building process, from design to ongoing maintenance. It benefits the planet, improves tenant quality of life, and delivers long-term operational savings and benefits.
Water is a critical component of any sustainability strategy. When it comes to monitoring and reducing water consumption and waste, you need a tool that delivers real-time insights. Wint Water Intelligence accurately reports on water usage across buildings, instantly detecting and shutting off leaks at the source. It helps you improve your building’s sustainability ratings and can cut up to 25% of the water waste, enabling long-term savings in water bills and at the same time environmental benefits.
