FINDING EVIDENCE OF GREEN LEASING IN UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT-LEASED PROPERTIES

摘要

Although the term “green leasing” is not yet well defined, its primary purpose is clear.With an aim to create a collaborative environment through legal provisions betweena building owner and a tenant, green leasing may ultimately help resolve the energyparadox in tenanted properties. Issues surrounding split-incentives are driven by amismatch between owners’ capital expenditures on improving building energy efficiencyand an uncertainty of tenant or occupant behavior that might affect a building’senergy consumption. Though some countries have started to develop guidelinespromoting the adoption of green leasing, especially in government buildings andcommercial real estate, implementation has not been overly successful globally. Thisstudy has two focuses, the first of which is to compare green leasing guidelines fromvarious countries and to suggest six comprehensive categories of green leasing components:management relationships, information sharing, certificates, legal stipulations,financial factors, and operation. The second core area of research places governmenttenantedproperties’ lease agreement contracts. The goal is to find any evidence in alegal condition between a building owner and a tenant, in this case federal government,to improve building energy efficiency with less environmental impact in theUnited States. The findings of the study indicated 41 out of 400 leases had greenclauses. Three out of six categories proposed in this study were found in the U.S.government-tenanted properties, while the other three types were not shown. Thefindings of this study also suggest categories of green leasing clauses can contribute todefining green leasing and provide empirical evidence of green leasing in governmenttenantedproperties. Ultimately, this study produces arguments for possible reasoningbehind the employment of some green lease categories but the lack of use of others,specifically in the U.S. office market and government-tenanted buildings.