Chicago — Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., an integrated financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate, announced the acquisition of the environmental consulting firm, ECD Energy, best known as the developer of technology underlying environmental rating systems for buildings, including Green Globes for the Green Building Initiative (GBI) and Go Green for BOMA Canada.

“Our clients are asking for guidance — to help define sustainability for their real estate portfolios, provide benchmarking tools to better manage their properties, as well as a practical roadmap to improve property performance,” said Lauralee Martin, Global COO of Jones Lang LaSalle. “There are a number of strong and developing property standards around the world, all of which we strongly support, such as LEED, BREEAM and ENERGY STAR, but there are few efficient tools like the Green Globes/Go Green programs that allow owners to bring their entire portfolios up to these standards. ECD has demonstrated real leadership in sustainability strategy and has developed a wide range of sustainability tools that can help our clients address the carbon footprint of their entire portfolio.”

Jones Lang LaSalle also gains use of ECD’s technology platform for assessing the sustainability profile of commercial buildings and benchmarking across portfolios. The tools assess new building designs, existing building operations and interior fit-outs in terms of their energy, water and environmental impact as well as the health and comfort of building occupants.

ECD developed Green Globes for new construction and existing buildings. It is licensed and overseen in the United States by the GBI. In Canada, the Green Globes system for existing buildings is licensed and overseen by BOMA Canada under the brand name “Go Green” (Visez vert). Under the terms of this acquisition, these Green Globes standards will be kept independent from Jones Lang LaSalle and operated under the governance of the GBI in the United States and BOMA in Canada. For more information, visit www.joneslanglasalle.com and www.thegbi.org.