CEO Survey on Sustainability Reveals Focus on Corporate Real Estate
A new global survey of 1,254 senior business executives, including more than 300 CEOs, shows that energy efficiency plays a central role in corporate sustainability efforts — a finding that has implications for how companies manage their real estate. Fifty-two percent of all respondents named energy efficiency as one of their leading sustainability priorities, a goal that is addressed primarily or solely through real estate strategies.
The survey, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), was co-sponsored by global real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle and seven other leading companies from different industries: A.T. Kearney, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Orange, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP and SunGard. The overall report, issued by the EIU today, sheds light on the growing importance of corporate sustainability in enabling companies to compete and to attract customers. While the survey did not focus specifically on real estate topics, 46 percent of respondents selected one of three real estate strategies as the number-one sustainability priority from a list of 10 possible priorities.
“CEOs and other corporate officers are very focused on improving sustainability, but they may not realize the major impact their real estate departments can make in achieving their goals,” said Dan Probst, Chairman, global environmental sustainability board at Jones Lang LaSalle. “As this study shows, the path to sustainability often starts with real estate and facility strategies.”