Green business has long been touted as good business. There’s only one problem: Metrics to support that hypothesis traditionally have been in short supply. Now comes Dr Nils Kok, real estate finance professor at Maastricht University, a visiting economist at the University of California at Berkeley, and co-founder and executive director of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), an organisation dedicated to mitigating the enormous environmental impact made by real estate structures as well as tracking the positive financial impact recorded by those who are implementing sustainability measures. Kok and his organization apparently are making an impression, as participation in the annual GRESB survey has increased from 195 REITs and privately managed funds in 2010 to 450 this year. These respondents account for some 36,000 properties globally with an aggregate value of US$1.3 trillion. Some of the biggest names in institutional real estate