(HOUSTON) – Hines, the international real estate firm, announced today that each of its 203 global offices has achieved the HinesGO® (GREEN OFFICE) designation for sustainable operations and performance.
Located in 100 cities in 17 countries, these offices have undertaken specific green measures to reduce environmental impact and complement sustainable building features.
HinesGO was created by Hines in 2008 as an internal prototype to ensure the firm was “walking the walk” of sustainable real estate.
The program encourages building occupants to identify and implement no-cost and low-cost alternatives to operating in a standard indoor office environment. Scored on a scale of 100, offices are evaluated in seven categories: Energy Efficiency; People & Atmosphere; Travel & Commuting; Reduce, Reuse & Recycle; Cleaning; Remodeling & Construction; and LEED®. When a specific strategy or improvement has been implemented, participants earn “Leaf Credits.” If an office achieves 70 Leaf Credits, it is then designated as a GREEN OFFICE.
In 2009, the program was offered to Hines’ tenant base representing 120 million square feet of managed office space around the world.
Since then, more than 700 tenants, such as Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Deloitte & Touche, GE Healthcare, JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, the San Diego Padres, Shell, Verizon and Wells Fargo—representing more than 36.3 million square feet—have achieved the designation.
The smallest Hines tenant to receive the designation is Susan Broll Interior Design, a 144-square-foot tenant in Hines’ Seattle Design Center.
The largest is ExxonMobil Corporation with more than 1.3 million square feet in Hines’ Greenspoint Plaza campus near Houston’s Intercontinental Airport.
Hines President and CEO Jeff Hines said, “HinesGO has been a wonderful, cost-effective way to rally our employees around an important cause—one that helps the environment and promotes our business objectives.
Expanding the program to our tenants has been a real value-add.
We were completing buildings at the top of the sustainability spectrum, but had no great way to influence what happens inside tenant spaces.”
 Hines Manager of Corporate Services Alan Cranfill said, “We found that achieving the designation was easier in some geographies than in others.
For example, in cities like Warsaw and Moscow, recycling services were not readily available and came at a high cost.
Local nuances required our offices to be creative in designing solutions that would help them meet our program requirements.”
According to Cranfill, Hines Brazil, for example, translated the scorecard into Portuguese and went on to certify more than 800,000 square feet of tenant space.
As a result of their regionalization of the program and its success with building occupants, the program received the “Best in Sustainability Award” from the Brazilian Facility Association in 2010.
Hines is a privately owned real estate firm with controlled assets valued at approximately $23 billion. In 2010 Hines was recognized by the EPA, for the third time, with the ENERGY STAR® Sustained Excellence Award; Hines manages 153 labeled buildings, representing more than 77 million square feet, in the ENERGY STAR program.
Twelve Hines development or redevelopment projects, representing more than six million square feet, have been designated as Designed to Earn the ENERGY STAR.
Hines is also a leader in the U.S. Green Building Council’s programs, with 202 projects, representing more than 107 million square feet that have been certified, pre-certified or registered under the various LEED rating systems.
Hines was a founding member of the German Sustainable Building Council and the Russian Green Building Council, and is active in the Green Building Council Brasil, the Green Building Council España, the Green Building Council Italia, the Indian Green Building Council, the BRE Environmental Assessment Method program in the United Kingdom and the Haute Qualité Environnementale program in France.
For more information or to learn more about sustainability at Hines, visit www.hines.com/sustainability.
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