Vancouver and Toronto streets ahead of London for green....

Canada’s Vancouver and Toronto lead the way in terms of office real estate and green building certification, a recent study by CBRE reveals

According to the inaugural International Green Building Adoption Index, 18.6% of space in 10 markets across Australia, Canada and Europe is now certified “green” versus just 6.4% in 2007.

Vancouver (51.6%) and Toronto (51%) are the pacesetters, followed by Sydney (46.5%) and Melbourne (28.8%). London sits bottom of the list of 10, with just 8.7% of its office space classed as green.

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David Pogue, CBRE’s Senior Vice President, Global Client Care/Sustainability, commented: “Buildings, particularly commercial properties, have long been at the forefront of pressing issues like water, waste, and significant energy use and the resultant carbon emissions.

“As the attention being paid to these issues grows, green building certification programs are becoming much more prevalent and more important to a variety of constituents and stakeholders.”

The Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne have seen green office space grow from less than 1% in 2006 to their current respective levels of 46.5% and 28.8%.

Other cities examined by CBRE include Warsaw (21.3%), Frankfurt (17.5%), Stockholm (12.6%), Amsterdam (11%) and Paris (9.1%).  

Dr Rogier Holtermans, project lead on the International Green Building Adoption Index, added: “Despite the presence of a wide variety of local building certification programs, internationally recognised green building certificates tend to be more widely adopted in the commercial real estate market. Tenants and investors need such standardized measures of environmental performance.”