Author(s)

A. van Hal

Abstract

In 2004, the Dutch National Sustainable Building Centre performed a research project to investigate the general belief that sustainable building is more expensive than standard building practice. The results, based on literature study and interviews, proved this to be untrue and demonstrated sustainable building to be economically very similar to standard practice or sometimes even better. The research project also showed that these positive financial aspects are hardly ever used to promote sustainable building. This seems to be due to a lack of knowledge on the part of construction companies, the unfavorable image of sustainable building and several institutional impediments. For example the typical split accountabilities of the investment budget on the one hand and the maintenance budget on the other hand, drives many ecologically suboptimal decisions. Initiated by SenterNovem [1] a new research project was started to recommend practical solutions to these identified issues. Besides the sustainable and \“regular” building sectors, other sectors were investigated to develop new insights. For example the experiences of companies experimenting with corporate social responsibility were included in the scope of the project, which was finalized in March 2006. The paper describes in detail the key conclusions and recommendations from this research. Keywords: economical benefit, profit, sustainable building, corporate social responsibility, innovation, incentives, labeling system, green mortgage, tax, real estate broke. 1 Objective, scope and research design In 2004, the Dutch National Sustainable Building Centre (now part of SenterNovem) performed a research project to investigate the profitability of

Keywords

economical benefit, profit, sustainable building, corporate social responsibility, innovation, incentives, labeling system, green mortgage, tax, real estate broke.