For their part, when they lease office space, businesses are increasingly seeking buildings that are highly sustainable. Prospective tenants generally base their assessment of a building’s quality on sustainability ratings. There is still no standardized international label for sustainable real estate. As far as Switzerland is concerned, buildings have been certified with labels including Minergie, LEED, DGNB, greenproperty, and SNBS. The various labels assign different weightings to the three dimensions of sustainable construction – society, business, and the environment.
The Minergie standard, for instance, focuses on a building’s energy consumption, while greenproperty or SNBS are holistic labels that assess sustainability in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.