TIAA-CREF, one of America’s largest institutional real estate investors, says it will improve the energy efficiency of its real estate portfolio by 10 percent by 2010.
The company’s Global Real Estate group is benchmarking the 43 million square feet of office buildings and other properties within the company’s real estate portfolio to identify opportunities to reduce energy consumption. Thus far, the buildings that comprise the office portfolio have reduced energy use by 125 million KBTUs, which is equivalent to an estimated 37 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
Examples of portfolio-wide strategies for improving energy performance that are being implemented include replacing inefficient lighting with Energy Star-qualified lighting, only operating buildings on Saturdays at the tenant’s request, and verifying that lights are turned off when the offices are unoccupied.