Atisreal, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas Real Estate, has organised a conference on Sustainable Development in Corporate Real Estate for all BNP Paribas Group employees.

A green approach has been progressively adopted by the real estate industry ever since the late 1970s, but the Grenelle Environment Forum has been the driving force behind a sustainable approach, which takes economic, social as well as ecological issues into account.
The Grenelle Environment Forum has played a major role in prompting investors, users and developers to regard the sustainable development debate as a key concern, taking into account the French government’s objectives: a new, energy and environmentally friendly reconstruction of buildings by 2020.

In addition to real estate, sustainable development has been incorporated into urban planning, with the development of eco-districts and the growing resolution to fight over-consumption of land resources clearly demonstrate.

The Urban Environmental Approach introduced by ADEME (Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie ) should, therefore, generate keen interest within the real estate community and promote sustainable urban planning.

With regards to tertiary building HQE® (Haute Qualité Environnementale ) and energy performance are labels that can still be seen today; however these labels only represent an assessment of their eco-friendly construction. We must, therefore, encourage a renewed interest in buildings that are also better adapted to the requirements of well-being and comfort. This is, the aim of the British standard BREEAM. Unlike the HQE® label, it uses a scoring system to assess environmental objectives, and it encourages all real estate players to take an integrated and sustainable approach to building design that would bring the building closer to the people.

Although this sustainable approach to real estate may well be an inevitable development, it still requires each link in the real estate chain to grasp the concepts and assume responsibility. This means that we have to define and integrate the real and current environmental issues, which above and beyond energy performance criteria, consist of bringing man and building closer together.

Atisreal, convinced of the importance of this approach, has created a think tank called Next Office by Atisreal, designed to envision the offices of the future. It aims to support its clients and help them anticipate the changes that will shape the way offices are designed, built and occupied.

The debate of organisational theorists, the development of the CSR concept (Corporate Social Responsibility) and the emergence of CSR rating agencies seem to offer ever-increasing validation and acceptance of the link between collective performance and the working environment.

Performance labels are a way of achieving this objective from a real-estate point of view. But there is another approach: it consists of integrating these concepts into user-investor/landlord relations by exploring the notion of “green renting”.