Atlanta is one of the top cities in the U.S. for “green” office buildings and other commercial properties, according to a study by a European university and a major U.S real estate firm.
Atlanta ranked No. 5 in the 2014 Green Building Adoption Index, a study of federal and U.S. Green Building Council data on buildings that meet certain environmental sustainability standards, according to a report Tuesday by CBRE Group and Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The study examined data on buildings in central business districts in the nation’s Top 30 markets.
The report said Minneapolis is the nation’s “greenest” city, with 77 percent of its commercial buildings being certified as green. San Francisco (67.2 percent), Chicago (62.1 percent), Houston (54.8 percent) and Atlanta (54.1 percent) rounded out the Top 5.
The survey examined data from both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program and the environmental certification program known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED.
Atlanta ranked second to Minneapolis in terms of the number of office buildings that are green, at 26.6 percent.
“We have seen a clear and steady increase in the percentage of LEED and Energy Star adoptions in Atlanta, fueled in part by growing demand from tenants for more sustainable, energy efficient space,” said John Ferguson, Southeast region president for CBRE.
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