2022 Orion Office REIT Tenant Environmental Survey

Orion owns a diversified portfolio of mission critical regional and corporate headquarters office buildings located in high quality suburban markets across the United States leased primarily on a single-tenant net-lease basis to creditworthy tenants.  A significant majority of our leases are double or triple net leases.  Double and triple-net leases are leases in which the tenant occupies the property as if it is the owner.  Therefore, Orion's tenants generally are solely responsible for the obligations related to the property, including paying all operating expenses associated with the property (e.g., real estate taxes, insurance, maintenance).  

Because the tenant occupies the property as if it is the owner under the net-lease model, the tenant generally controls environmental practices and conditions at the property, such as waste management, and energy and water usage practices, and decides when and how to implement environmentally sustainable practices at the property.  While we do not control the business operations of the tenant, as the property owner, we nevertheless recognize that the operation of commercial real estate assets can have a meaningful impact on the environment – particularly with respect to resource consumption and waste generation – and on the health of building occupants.

At Orion, we acknowledge the need to prepare for potential climate-change related impacts to our business and properties.  We also acknowledge that we primarily through our tenants’ use of energy and water, and generation of waste, have an impact on climate change.  As such, Orion intends to engage and collaborate with our tenants across our portfolio to better understand our climate change-related impacts and seek to identify areas of improvement.

Although we generally do not have direct control of our properties under the net-lease model, to help inform our development of our ESG strategies and initiatives, we conducted a tenant survey during 2022 to gather information regarding property specific environmental features of our properties. Excluding vacant and recently sold properties, we achieved an overall survey response rate of almost 81%.  Although not every tenant provided an answer to every question in the survey, we were impressed by how engaged our tenants were on issues of environmental corporate responsibility – just as we are.

The 2022 Orion Office REIT Tenant Environmental Survey addressed a number of areas of corporate environmental responsibility relevant to the real estate industry, including energy efficiency, water use efficiency, and certification of properties for environmental standards such as LEED and EnergyStar. We are happy to be able to share with you this overview of the results of our survey.

81%

Response Rate

Energy Efficiency, Waste, and Water Efficiency

Among the environmental issues included in our tenant survey were energy efficiency, waste management and water efficiency.  To assess how these issues are being addressed at our properties, we asked our tenants to identify relevant initiatives that had been implemented at the properties.  Regarding energy efficiency, LED lighting was used by most survey respondents.  The use of LED lighting was followed in popularity by motion detection lighting systems, energy efficient windows and energy efficient appliances.

With respect to waste management, a building recycling initiative was present at a majority of our properties, and a few tenants had implemented composting initiatives.  Over 65% of the respondents implement recycling initiatives at the properties.

Various tenants had implemented water efficiency initiatives, such as water efficient plumbing fixtures (noted by approximately two-thirds of respondents), followed in popularity by smart irrigation systems and water efficient appliances.  

Transportation and Building Health & Safety

Our 2022 tenant environmental survey included questions on additional issues relevant to our properties and sustainability. We asked our tenants about environmentally friendly transportation initiatives and over half of survey respondents noted that the properties were accessible by public transportation and almost half reported that the properties had either bicycle storage facilities or a bike share location.  

55%	35%
of respondents say the property is accessible by public transportation	of respondents reported bicycle storage facilities or a bike share location

In addition, we also asked our tenants if the properties had electric vehicle (EV) charging stations on site. Tenants at ten of the properties noted that they had EV charging stations, including one tenant installing EV stations during the fourth quarter of 2022, and an additional five tenants reported that they were either currently planning the installation of EV charging stations or were reviewing the process for installation of EV charging stations.

Building health and safety was also included on our survey, and essentially all survey respondents stated the properties had implemented emergency evacuation, planning and drills.

Certifications

Our 2022 tenant environmental survey also inquired with the tenants about environmental and healthy building certifications.  The following data are based on responses Orion received to the survey and have not been independently verified by Orion.

	LEED Certifications · 769,063 SF of LEED certified buildings · 162,740 SF currently seeking certification
	EnergyStar Certifications · 1,165,086 SF of EnergyStar certified buildings
	WELL Certifications · 358,204 SF of WELL certified buildings

We are pleased with the results of our first Tenant Environmental Survey and greatly appreciate the participation by so many of our tenants who spent the time and effort to assist us on this project. Orion continues to evaluate the survey findings.  In coordination with its tenants, Orion is committed to identifying environmental initiatives and targets that are designed to have a long-term positive impact on Orion’s stakeholders.