Owner Occupier Partnerships
The single most important issue in reducing the carbon footprint of the existing commercial building stock is the owner occupier relationship and how they can work together to achieve carbon emission reductions. This Working Group brings together owners and occupiers with the aim of breaking down the barriers to effective collaboration.
With commercial buildings responsible for some 18% of UK carbon emission and only 2% of this stock replaced annually, there is clearly a responsibility on the property sector to address carbon emissions in its existing stock urgently. Substantial carbon savings exist within many commercial buildings. The question then has to be asked ‘Why don’t people just do it?’ The answer lies in the relationship that exists between owners and occupiers. Their historic adversarial relationship creates real barriers and a general lack of trust between the parties. Energy efficiency in buildings has never been a significant business priority, given relatively low fuel prices and the minimal financial impact of compliance with environmental legislation. Owners and occupiers have simply had little incentive to engage in this area.
The picture is, however, beginning to change, as they start to realise the mutual benefits of managing and occupying their buildings more efficiently. These include lower occupational costs for occupiers and an opportunity for owners to reduce voids and improve lease renewal rates. If it transpires that CRCEES allowances must be bought to cover the emissions from energy consumption in a building, both owners and occupiers should be even more enthusiastic about saving energy and costs.
Key areas for owners and occupiers to work together on include establishing green leases and/or Memoranda of Understanding; setting up Green Building Management Groups; measuring performance and sharing data for sustainability benchmarking and agreeing suitable arrangements for financing low carbon retrofit works.
The Better Buildings Partnership’s first work on the owner-occupier dynamic was its Green Lease Toolkit, published in April 2009, which received industry-wide recognition. That Toolkit provides guidance on the inclusion of environmental provisions either in the lease or in a Green Memorandum of Understanding which sits alongside the lease and is not legally binding. These provisions set up a framework for collaboration, but are worthless unless they result in action to achieve resource use reductions.
The BBP, therefore, developed this work further through its Green Building Management Toolkit, which provides practical guidance on how to set up a Green Building Management Group and has been designed to be flexible such that it can be used in any scenario. It also provides a number of practical tools, including a template introductory presentation, environmental action plan and example performance reports.
BBP Members will continue to implement BBP solutions across their own property portfolios and engage with their occupiers in order to develop effective partnerships to improve the sustainability of their operations.