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Spotlight: Norm Miller: Does Green Pay Off?

As USD’s new LEED-certified Student Life Pavilion takes shape, many people on campus may wonder whether the potentially higher costs of building “green” are worth it.  USD professor Norm Miller of the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate had the same question. Through collaboration with Jay Spivey and Andrew Florance of Costar, the #1 provider of commercial real estate information in the U.S., Professor Miller began a systematic nation-wide study to address the benefits of investments in energy savings and environmental design. The results of their research, entitled “Does Green Pay Off?” were published in the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management in 2008, and quickly became one of the most-cited works in the field.

The data was based on comparison of Energy Star and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings versus non-Energy Star or non-LEED-certified office property in the U.S. Miller and his co-authors concluded that green office space had higher occupancy rates, higher rents, and significantly lower operating expenses. Data also indicated that while LEED-certified construction added to building costs, they were balanced or outweighed by even higher sales prices per square foot.

“This data offers a clearer and more objective picture of the costs and benefits of green construction in terms of commercial real estate, and is a significant step toward proving that sustainability equals profits,” Professor Miller noted.  (Full Story)