Sustainability in Industrial Real Estate — What Owners and Tenants Face in 2026
Sustainability has stopped being a marketing line in Metro Vancouver industrial. Tenant procurement, lender pricing and the 2030 zero-emissions mandate have made it a transaction factor, and older buildings are on the clock.
September 22, 2026 · 2 min read · By Samuel Brahem, in association with NAI Commercial
The business case
Three forces are pushing it. Major occupiers, especially 3PLs serving multinational retailers, food distributors and tech firms, now need facility environmental data for Scope 3 reporting, so building performance is a procurement screen. Several major Canadian banks offer green loans at 10 to 25 basis points below standard, and insurers are starting to price resilience. And the Vancouver Building By-law requires all new buildings, industrial included, to be zero-emissions by 2030, with the BC Energy Step Code and CleanBC tightening behind it.
The result in rent: certified or high-performing industrial assets are showing premiums of $0.50 to $1.50 per sq. ft. over comparable conventional buildings, strongest in Richmond, Burnaby and Vancouver proper.
Which certification
LEED Silver or Gold is now the baseline for Class A new builds; recent spec projects in Campbell Heights and Richmond have pursued it as standard. BOMA BEST is the practical route for existing buildings, with Bronze to Platinum tiers and far lower cost. The Zero Carbon Building Standard is rare in industrial here but is where institutional flagships are heading. National occupiers tend to specify LEED; local owner-users are usually well served by BOMA BEST.
Retrofits that pay
- LED lighting with sensors and daylight harvesting: lighting is 30 to 50 percent of an industrial building's electricity, and the upgrade cuts it 60 to 80 percent, with two- to four-year paybacks and BC Hydro incentives.
- Envelope: roof insulation, dock doors and seals, better glazing. Most relevant to older Delta, Surrey and Langley buildings with high heating costs.
- HVAC: heat pumps or VRF in conditioned space cut heating and cooling 30 to 50 percent, with CleanBC electrification incentives.
- Rooftop solar: economics have improved as rates rise and panels fall, best for cold storage and manufacturing with daytime load. Richmond and Surrey have streamlined solar permitting.
Older buildings in secondary submarkets have runway. They do not have an exemption.
What shows up in the lease
Expect green lease clauses on data sharing and materials, demands for utility submetering from tenants with ESG reporting, EV charging for fleets and staff parking, and requests for Energy Star scores or BOMA BEST certificates as a condition of signing. Owners who can answer those questions keep the national tenant. Tenants should raise them in negotiation, not after.
