In light of current global effort to make the world more eco-friendly, various initiatives both at international and governmental level have been set up to tackle the issue via different industries. Commercial property is certainly on the list of targets for improving energy efficiency.

In the UK, mandatory reports on CO₂ emission are expected to come into force in 2012 (Climate Change Act 2008, Section 84).  Encouragingly, UK business has been receptive to the idea of sustainable offices. The Better Building Partnership, which represents leading commercial landlords, has undertaken a considerable amount of work on promoting sustainability in commercial property.

 While a recent letter by the British Property Foundation and the UK Green Building Council to the government, formally requesting compulsory provision of Display Energy Certificates DECs in private sector highlights landlords’ perspective, one may wonder what the general view of major office occupiers’ is. The RICS Service Charge Code, albeit suggesting “fair and reasonable approach to the apportionment of sustainability costs between owner and occupiers”, does not contain any specific proposition in regard to how this should be done. It is however essential that both owners and occupiers come to an agreement on who is paying the “cost of green leases”.

Renewable energy usually turns out to be an expensive enterprise. Reducing energy consumption is a complex and, what’s even more important, a long-term process, which may not fit some occupiers’ risk management strategies. On top of that, energy requirements vary from business to business and what degree of precision could be achieved in allocation of costs is a key question.

It is clear that all stakeholders groups within the UK property industry needs to embrace the underlying principles of this new approach to monitoring and reducing energy usage. However, the ultimate question is how can effective collaboration between all industry participants be achieved in order to bring the target closer?