8B — October 26 - November 8, 2018 — Green Buildings/Environmental — M id A tlantic
Real Estate Journal
www.marejournal.com
G reen B uildings /E nvironmental By Kristi Marinelli, KLM Consulting, LLC Save $ on insurance premiums by building green!
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id you know over 90% of Insurance Agents over look offering in-
There are numerous ben- efits—financial and other- wise—that LEED-EB certifi- cation at any level can provide, for this article…”insurance discounts!”. A number of insurance com- panies provide discounts on building insurance for LEED certified commercial buildings. The premise behind the dis- count for LEED certification is the fact that building manage- ment is paying closer attention to the ongoing performance of a LEED certified building, and that this ongoing attention re- duces risk. The first company to offer this discount was Fire- man’s Fund, which began the incentive in 2006. We will use Fireman’s Fund’s discount as our example in this article. Fireman’s Fund offers a 5% discount to insure LEED certified buildings. Fireman’s Fund’s discounted coverage for LEED certified buildings also includes rebuilding LEED certified buildings to LEED requirements if there is a loss. More recently Fireman’s Fund has begun offering the 5% discount to buildings that earn the Energy Star Label. So what is the impact of a 5% discount on building in- surance? Using the national average cost of building insurance for Class A buildings of $0.42 per s/f per year (source: BOMA En- ergy Exchange Report, 2013), a 5% discount amounts to 2.1 cents psf per year. One way to put this in per- spective is to consider the im- pact for a 100,000 s/f building, which would see a savings of approximately $2,000 per year after achieving LEED certifi- cation. Because the discount applies to each year after cer- tification, this is a recurring discount with a present value of about $9,000 for the first five years. Another way to put this in perspective is to compare it to the LEED certification fee per s/f charged by the U.S. Green Building Council. So if you manage a LEED certified building and you have not yet captured an insurance discount, go after it. And if you are considering whether to attempt LEED certification, make sure building insurance discounts are on your list of reasons to go for it. Kristi Marinelli is CEO of KLM Consulting, LLC in Wilmington, DE.
surance pre- mi um d i s - counts that apply to your LEED certi- fied building? Most build- ing owners and facilities m a n a g e r s
Kristi Marinelli
ing Buildings: Operations + Maintenance rating system (LEED-EB: O+M)—a lower carbon footprint and a build- ing that is operating at peak
performance. Building owners often tell us that while they can appreciate those benefits, they just can’t afford the reg- istration and certification
costs. But here’s a question many building owners prob- ably haven’t asked themselves: Can they afford not to pursue LEED-EB: O+M certification?
know about the most publi- cized benefits of achieving LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification under the Exist-
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