CBRE adopts BOMA energy efficiency program.

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International Foundation announced that CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. has adopted the BOMA Energy Efficiency Program (BEEP) to help reduce energy consumption at its managed properties through increased employee education and training.

The adoption of BEEP is part of CBRE's recently announced environmental stewardship initiative.

The BEEP program, which offers cutting-edge energy savings solutions through a series of seminars, was developed by the BOMA Foundation in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR[R] program. BEEP teaches commercial real estate professionals how to reduce energy consumption and costs with proven no- and low-cost strategies for optimizing equipment, people and practices.

"The BEEP program is the most comprehensible and achievable energy efficiency program we reviewed," said Dave Pogue, senior managing director, Asset Services, CB Richard Ellis. "At its core is the implementation of the EPA ENERGY STAR program, which we have been utilizing throughout our U.S. office building portfolio. It was a natural progression to reach out to the BOMA Foundation for the broader implementation of their training system."

Over the course of the next three years, CBRE intends to make the BEEP material broadly available throughout the CBRE system and will seek to train more than 500 employees, including real estate managers overseeing all major office assets totaling more than 125 million square feet.

CBRE will collaborate with the BOMA Foundation on the training platform. Remarked Jim Bilger, Senior Managing Director for Operations, Asset Services, CB Richard Ellis "We found BOMA to be very open to the idea of partnering with us on a co-branded training platform that would allow us to manage the training and provide internal teaching resources, while personalizing some of the training material to be consistent with our standards and practices."

"We are delighted and proud that the BEEP curriculum will be part of the bold energy reduction initiative set forth by CB Richard Ellis," said Gary Wood, RPA, chair of the BOMA Foundation.

"CBRE is among a select group of companies and organizations leading the industry on the energy and environment front, and the BEEP program, which was developed in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Agency ENERGY STAR program, will help them reach their efficiency goals.

"The strategies taught in the BEEP courses can help reduce commercial real estate's energy usage by as much as 30 percent, which is the equivalent of removing 120 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from the air or 12 million cars from the road."