Leave it to the Rocky Mountain Institute. It came as no surprise at a recent seminar to hear two smart analysts from Amory Lovins' organization address a barely touched yet thorny issue: How to entice developers of multi-tenant buildings to green their properties.

Despite the fact that LEED-certified buildings rent for over $10/square foot more than older buildings and recoup investments from operational savings alone, investments in high-performance, multi-tenant buildings have been rare to date. One answer, said Carol Fluhrer and Erik Bonnett, is an "Integrated Leasing Process" that enables a more equitable distribution of the cost and return.

The process, they explained, would stretch from the planning and design phase to operation and include designing for sub-metering, right-sizing the HVAC for 3 watts/square foot, quantifying and marketing the building's value and TCO, metering for actual usage and using pass-through billing.