Washington, D.C.  — The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and The Real Estate Roundtable hosted the first annual USGBC Real Estate Finance Summit in New York last week, attracting leaders from all facets of the real estate and financial services industries, who participated in vigorous discussion about the next generation of financial products and services needed to accelerate green building practices and drive industry-wide change.

Connie Mitchell-Ford, the Wall Street Journal real estate and property bureau chief, kicked off the event. She was followed by Roundtable President and CEO Jeffrey D. DeBoer, who gave the opening remarks. “We believe our customers will increasingly demand high-performance, sustainable buildings as a basic element of what constitutes Class A commercial real estate…whether they are looking for space in an office, apartment, retail, hotel or, even, industrial warehouse building,” said DeBoer.

Also participating was New York City Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff.

“Green building has moved from a frill, to a necessity, and we will lead by example,” said Doctoroff. “We did our own study of New York buildings and discovered those buildings we greened had 30% less energy use and the renovations and retrofits have a 5-7 year payback. That’s huge for a city like New York.”

The Summit also included two panels, one of leaders from the real estate industry, including Jon Ratner, VP Sustainability, Forest City Enterprises; Sally Wilson, Global Director of Environmental Strategy, CB Richard Ellis; and Jeff Blau, President, The Related Companies.

The other, a finance panel, included David Martin, Managing Director, Real Estate Merchant Banking Group, Wells Fargo; Bill Lashbrook, Senior Vice President, PNC Real Estate Finance, PNC Bank; and Manny Patino, Vice President, Energy Services, JP Morgan Chase. Both panels were moderated by Roger Platt, senior vice president and counsel for The Real Estate Roundtable.

“It’s clear from the dialogue at the summit that we need financing served up in ways that reward and provide incentives for green building,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President and CEO of the USGBC. “We know we need more green technologies and innovations to drive costs down and drive performance up, and LEED’s metrics to verify that performance. And we need policies that move us all in a sustainable and restorative direction.

“USGBC’s mission is green buildings for all within a generation,” he continued, “and if we want to meet this goal, we need to continue this conversation with real estate and financial leaders in order to continue the speed and scale of growth in green buildings.”

The Real Estate Roundtable (www.rer.org) brings together leaders of the nation’s public and privately-held real estate ownership, development, lending and management firms with the leaders of national real estate trade associations to jointly address key national policy issues relating to real estate and the overall economy. Collectively, Roundtable members’ portfolios contain over 5 billion square feet of office, retail and industrial properties valued at more than $700 billion; over 1.5 million apartment units; and in excess of 300,000 hotel rooms. Participating trade associations represent more than 1 million people involved in virtually every aspect of the real estate business.