Whether you are a closely-held small commercial property owner or a large, publicly-traded real estate company, it is important that you conduct a full energy performance assessment on all of your properties.

Understanding existing and emerging technologies and energy disclosure policies can help you operate your buildings more efficiently, avoid legal risk and improve the valuations of your real estate.

Maximizing the value of potential improvements requires solid benchmark information on how your buildings use energy today. It also requires creativity and collaboration with your tenants to achieve mutual energy efficiency goals.

Customers and potential investors are making decisions based on whether building owners and commercial tenants are exhibiting corporate social responsibility. Both landlords and tenants can benefit most if they can put aside the underlying adversarial relationship to cooperate on energy efficiency.

Taking steps toward making your buildings perform better is about more than just establishing a "green" reputation.

• Commercial properties in 13 jurisdictions in the United States are governed by energy efficiency regulations that require that a building's energy score be disclosed to a potential buyer. These kinds of energy efficiency requirements are already much more prevalent in Europe and are expected to spread to other jurisdictions in the U.S. If you own property that's not located in a place that requires energy use disclosure now, you may find that requirement will be in place later. 

• Even if the locations where your properties reside never are covered by such requirements, the marketplace is moving toward energy disclosure as an expectation. 

• Concurrent with that trend is the reality that high-performing buildings will be able to command a premium in the commercial real estate marketplace – both a price premium when they are sold, and a rent premium that tenants will pay because they experience lower operating costs. The reverse is also true: Buildings in your portfolio that have poor energy scores could be harder to sell, and the sale prices will likely be depressed by those poor scores.
  

Commercial properties are your investment. To get the proper return on that investment, you need to effectively manage the energy performance of your buildings.