NEW YORK---TIAA-CREF, one of America's largest institutional real estate investors, announced today a goal to improve the energy efficiency of its real estate portfolio by 10 percent by 2010.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has named TIAA-CREF a 2008 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year for outstanding energy management and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, citing the company's progress in improving energy efficiency.
TIAA-CREF's Global Real Estate group has embarked on an energy benchmarking initiative across the 43 million square feet of office buildings and other properties within the company's real estate portfolio, with the goal of identifying opportunities to reduce energy consumption.
These reductions were achieved through TIAA-CREF's work with over 30 third-party property management companies charged with the day-to-day operations of its real estate assets to identify portfolio-wide and property-specific opportunities for improvement. 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. Specific properties are realizing savings by implementing energy management action plans.
The next step in TIAA-CREF's benchmarking initiative will target the 12,000-unit multifamily portfolio and will include collecting information on energy and water consumption, trash production and other areas for potential improvement. The program also will include purchasing ENERGY STAR-qualified appliances, replacing incandescent bulbs with ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent lamps, and increasing heating, ventilating and air conditioning efficiency, with the goal of identifying additional actions as the program progresses.
TIAA-CREF
www.tiaa-cref.org
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