Two responses that I saw so far for Smart Buildings:
- Reflective overview of the many definitions and facets of Sustainability (Profitability, Carbon, Comfort, etc).
- Anything that gets a building to fully leased.
This, more than anything I’ve ever read, shows the issues with Smart Buildings. To some it is a social and cultural issue and to others it is a marketing issue. While society and marketing can come together to do some amazing things, they can also come together for spectacular failures such as the on-going “Green Washing” debate around energy efficiency and sustainability.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you have two twin buildings sitting next to each other in the same city with the same shell, infrastructure, retail metrics, and leasing levels with both being LEED Gold certified. The only thing different about them is the ownership and management companies – the first is focused only on profitability and low costs with the second focused on maintaining a sustainable environment along with profits. These two buildings are going to look exactly the same on paper.
The only real difference is that the second building will live up to the principles they are espousing over the long term (with a probable higher operating cost) while the first may or may not. But this isn’t something a tenant is ever likely to know or realize during the leasing process because everything is going to look the same on paper. Maybe you could discover this tendency during a check of each owners’ other properties but even then it’s no guarantee.
Smart Buildings should be more than just a marketing ploy but unfortunately there’s no way of knowing whether that is the case or not. Sure, you can check LEED certification but is a building LEED certified REALLY better than one built around sustainable principles – including by not spending extra money for a more and more generic certification?