Why go green?
Currently, incentives are mainly focused on improving operational energy efficiency and achieving high BREEAM or LEED ratings.
In 2009, the Russian government set an ambitious and legally binding target to improve national energy efficiency by 40 percent by 2020 as compared to a 1990 baseline. The operation of buildings currently accounts for about half of Russia's energy consumption, and significant improvement in the performance of new and existing buildings is required if the target is to be met.
Beginning in January 2012, all buildings with an energy bill of more than 10 million rubles ($330,000) are required to have energy passports. At the moment, however, the officially approved form of these passports remains unknown.
Moreover, an order issued by the Regional Development Ministry in 2010 sets ambitious targets for all nonresidential buildings to increase energy efficiency by 15 percent every five years starting in 2011. But these targets only apply to the energy consumed by heating and ventilation systems; other energy uses are not regulated. The system lacks explicit mechanisms for energy control and monitoring. Yet despite its undeveloped state, it could be seen as a future concern for property owners.
Clearly, regulation has an important role to play in improving the energy efficiency of warehouse buildings, but increasingly developers and owner-occupiers of industrial buildings are also coming to understand the commercial benefits that sustainability can bring. These include lower operational costs, insurance against more onerous regulations and increased energy prices in the future, and the ability to attract good tenants.
The last of these is key for today's green warehouse pioneers. Sustainable warehouse construction is an established trend in all developed countries, and major warehouse developers have committed to green building certification. For instance, ProLogis announced as far back as 2008 that it would register each building with the USGBC to be considered for LEED certification, the U.S. national standard for environmentally responsible construction.
The reason to adopt such a policy is that certified buildings provide multinational tenants with distribution-facility options that further their own sustainability agendas. International retailers and logistic companies operating under corporate sustainable purchasing policies expect to work out of the same type of facilities in emerging markets.
In Russia, certification holds further importance as an indicator of building quality on the local market, where there is no clear definition of Class A warehouse facilities.