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The green edge

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This week, the Natural Resources Defense Council released "The Green Edge: How Commercial Property Investment in Green Infrastructure Creates Value" -- a first-ever illustrative and well-documented report that helps answer that question by drawing from all available published material to capture the multitude of tangible, monetizable benefits that green infrastructure investments (trees, rain gardens, and porous pavement, rainwater harvesting cisterns, bioswales, etc.) can unlock for the commercial real estate sector, including commercial property owners and their tenants.

By assessing common commercial real estate portfolio types, including medium-sized office buildings, midrise apartment buildings and retail centers, the new NRDC report shows that cumulative benefits to property owners can exceed the millions over the long-term, both when doing new construction and at existing developed sites. 

Green infrastructure -- water quality management techniques like green roofs, tree plantings, rain gardens, permeable pavement, that mimic natural hydrologic functions -- has been proven to help solve major urban stormwater problems and improve the health and livability of neighborhoods. Cities and others have promoted these practices to commercial property owners as a way to improve stormwater management and, in some communities, to reduce stormwater utility bills. But relatively little information has been publicized about the additional value that green infrastructure, when used on private property, can provide to commercial property owners and their tenants.

In many cities, private property owners can receive a stormwater fee credit for installing green infrastructure. However, even in cities with relatively high stormwater fees and available credits, the value of the credit alone often will not provide a sufficient economic incentive to motivate investment in these environmentally beneficial practices.

In order to encourage additional implementation of green infrastructure, this report identifies and quantifies (to the extent feasible) the range of additional economic benefits that green infrastructure can bring to property owners, including owners of multifamily residential buildings. When accounting for these benefits, commercial property owners receive a much greater return on investment -- and have a much stronger business case for green infrastructure investments -- than when considering stormwater fee savings alone.


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