Energy performance labeling: impact on rental values across regional offices within the UK

This study focuses on the investigation of energy performance labeling or ecolabelling as an important topic in the built environment industry, due to the increasing focus on sustainable practices. Within this study two regional cities in the UK were analyzed to view any impact on rental values, attributed to energy performance labels, focusing specifically on offices. The energy performance label studied in this work is the BREEAM certification scheme. The data for the offices within the cities selected was sourced from the CoStar database. The data samples were then adapted for analysis using SPSS. A multiple regression model was used in SPSS to isolate the price effects of the ecolabel. Results show that offices with BREEAM certifications did attract a rental premium that can be attributed to the energy performance label when compared to non-BREEAM certified properties. It was found that there are some large variations across the cities as to how much the BREEAM rating has an effect. The study focuses on five cities within the UK so a larger sample of offices and locations could be used in the future. Certain property characteristics were not available at source from the CoStar database, which may have a bearing on the analysis. Finally, this study is one of the first in the topic area to focus specifically on regional cities across the UK, as opposed to the UK market. Going forward this research could be built upon for further study within the area.