USGBC Launches Program for Real Estate Portfolios

High-performing, LEED-certified buildings are great for showing what’s possible, but the vast majority of existing building will never pursue—much less achieve—certification. But those buildings are responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions from the built environment, so it’s imperative to improve their performance.

At Greenbuild 2024 in Philadelphia, President and CEO of USGBC and GBCI Peter Templeton, announced the launch of PERFORM, a new guidance and verification program aimed at owners and managers of real estate portfolios. But unlike with LEED projects, GBCI will not hold PERFORM projects to a consensus-based leadership standard. Rather, GBCI will help PERFORM users set and meet their own sustainability goals—at their own pace. As such, USGBC is using the term “verification” instead of “certification,” and participants will receive “verification letters” instead of plaques.

In its press release, USGBC explains that PERFORM is a guidance framework “designed to track and improve sustainability performance of diverse building portfolios, enabling incremental improvements across all owned, occupied, or managed assets” and comes with the following complimentary tools: 

• Portfolio-wide guidance and assessment to help organizations develop their own goals and strategies.
• Measurement and verification from GBCI of portfolio-wide performance improvement based on the organization’s goals and strategies.
• Technical support for existing building portfolios at various levels of performance based on the organization’s goals.

PERFORM aims to help organizations bridge the gap between their often ambitious sustainability targets and lack of effective action plans to achieve them, explains USGBC.

The program rollout is quite transparent with full public access to the program guide, pricing table, and additional forms. Officially named “Arc PERFORM,” the program uses the Arc platform to collect and manage data on the following metrics:

• emissions
• energy
• water
• waste
• health
• resilience
• biodiversity
• social impact

Participants can choose which metrics to address. The program’s fee is based on portfolio size and starts at $2,000 for the energy and emissions metrics and $1,000 for each of the others. Prices are higher for USGBC non-members.

More on portfolio-wide performance

Portfolio Program Targets the “Brown” Assets LEED Left Behind

For more information:

U.S. Green Building Council
usgbc.org