The Green Property Alliance membership will periodically identify opportunities for collaboration on projects of common interest, bringing their unique strengths to bear for the benefit of their memberships. This section lists past projects where two or more Green Property Alliance member organisations have collaborated in this way.

Green Construction Board/Green Property Alliance Carbon Penalties and Incentives Project (2013 – 2014)

The Green Construction Board and the Green Property Alliance jointly undertook a project, funded by industry contributions and commissioned from Deloitte, to examine whether the current fiscal and regulatory instruments designed to stimulate carbon and energy efficient behaviours in buildings are working effectively. The project focussed on non-domestic buildings, both new and existing, across the value chain from development and investment, to occupation.

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation in the number of legislative instruments, fiscal levers and penalties which have been applied to the real estate sector in order to regulate its energy efficiency and carbon performance. However, the extent to which these levers are achieving their objectives, and where there may be scope for improvement and simplification, merited research. From within industry, we set out to explore whether legislation is correctly targeted and to explore if there enough co-ordination across Government to ensure that legislation does not overlap or send confusing signals to the market. The overall intention was to consider a more efficient but fiscally neutral regime which strikes a balance between reducing the negative environmental impact from industry, whilst enhancing positive economic growth within the UK.

The project analysed the range of current and emerging legislative and fiscal levers and penalties which apply to building energy and carbon performance, comparing their objectives and examining:

– What they seek to achieve
– To what extent they have been successful in their objective
– Whether any of the fiscal incentives or legislative measures lead to unintended or undesirable consequences or behaviours
– Is the framework of penalties/incentives comparable to that available for other sectors (e.g. compare the arrangements for Climate Change Agreements with the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRCEES)
– Do penalties and incentives positively change behaviour, or are they arguably rewarding sub-optimal behaviour
– Are there other measures conceivable which are not currently being employed, but which could make a measurable difference to the performance of non-domestic buildings (e.g. behavioural or other non-legislative measures)
– To what extent is there overlap in the range of energy/carbon instruments (e.g. CRCEES/CCA/CCL/EU ETS/EPCs/DECs)

Read the final report and its appendices.

Setting the Ground Rules for Property (2010)

The Green Property Alliance identified the need for greater consistency and clarity in the way in which the sustainability performance of buildings and wider property portfolios are measured and reported upon.  A working group was convened to see if agreement could be reached on how actual resource efficiency could be measured in rented commercial buildings, where owners and occupiers may hold mixed responsibilities for the management and use of energy and water and the production of emissions and waste.  The paper identifies some preliminary metrics and areas where further work is required by the industry.

http://www.betterbuildingspartnership.co.uk/download/gpa-common-metrics-paper.pdf

CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme: A Guide for Landlords and Tenants (2010)

This guide was written by a cross-industry working group, comprising Green Property Alliance members, in order to assist owners and occupiers of commercial property to plan to implement the CRCEES.  The CRCEES is a legally binding emissions trading scheme which applies to large businesses and public sector organisations with effect from April 2010.

http://www.bpf.org.uk/en/files/bpf_documents/sustainability/CRC_Guide_2010.pdf