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Warehouses and distribution centersThe absolutely unsexy buildings have been heated by the acceleration of online shopping in the coronavirus pandemic. rise in e-commerce and started the spree of buying and building boxy low structures, raise rents and increased returns for investors.

Now, as investors and others embrace carbon reduction targets, the challenge is to make these buildings greener.

In the United States, where regulations are more lenient, developers lag behind their European counterparts in building sustainable warehouses and distribution centers, and buildings are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Another cause of inequality, experts say, is rentals, which can deter spending on building improvements that can rein in energy use.

But American companies are starting to take steps to make their warehouses more energy efficient, including upgrading building materials. Some warehouse owners are even turning rooftops into solar farms that can power the building’s operations and in many cases reduce operating costs for nearby homeowners and businesses.

Progress is expected to accelerate as more community solar programs emerge and local governments set more ambitious decarbonisation targets.

“This is the beginning of a wave,” said Brian M. LaMont, senior vice president of capital and construction management. STAG IndustrialA Boston real estate investment trust with a large warehouse portfolio.

Experts say the need for change is urgent. Buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of carbon emissions from both construction and operations, as well as greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

Warehouses and distribution centers, which typically have large, open interiors devoted to storage with a small amount of square footage reserved for office functions, seem easier to make green than other real estate. Compared to more heavily used structures such as office buildings or hotels, many require only a modest amount of energy to run.

“The path to decarbonization is shallower,” said Christopher Babatope, assistant director of real estate at Oxford Economics, a London-based forecasting company.

A new generation of net-zero warehouses is starting to pop up in Europe, with building codes and environmental regulations more stringent and uniform than in the United States.

But the bigger problem is that most existing warehouses are not built to the highest standards. More than 70 percent of industrial space in the United States was built before the 21st century, and a third of the inventory is over 50 years old. report by real estate company Newmark.

Making such buildings greener means making sure they are well insulated, replacing old lighting with LEDs and upgrading HVAC systems, among other things.

Often rental arrangements experts say it discourages such investments. In office buildings, a landlord often leases to multiple tenants and runs the building operations; if the owner makes investments that reduce energy use, they benefit when operating costs are reduced. But in warehouses, owners often lease to a single tenant under an arrangement known as triple net leases, which holds the occupant, not the owner, responsible for maintenance and operations.

“It’s less hands-on,” said Breana Wheeler, the owner’s director of operations in the United States, at BRE, a building science center in the UK who manages a global sustainability certification program that some warehouse owners follow.

As a result, neither the tenant nor the landlord is particularly motivated to invest in a building; the tenant is unwilling to spend money on another company’s property and the landlord is reluctant because energy savings will often benefit the tenant.

So-called green leases have emerged over the past few years to begin addressing the situation. These leases encourage landlords and tenants to share information about things like energy use in a building, and sometimes lead to collaboration on retrofit projects.

According to experts, improvements are quickly becoming a necessity. building performance standardsIt’s gaining traction with the threat of fines for owners who don’t comply, including those mandating carbon reduction. Plus one greener warehouse It may be more attractive to companies that want to achieve their environmental goals.

Where energy costs are high and a warehouse has a solid roof, some owners and tenants have installed. solar arrays to power building operations. More states require warehouses to be built from the start with “solar ready” roofs that can house photovoltaic panels.

But a solar installation sufficient to operate a warehouse can often only cover a small portion of a large, unobstructed area.

Where is this community sun income. Until now, 21 states and the District of Columbia have community solar programsmost were created to benefit low- and middle-income public service customers.

Under the programs, a solar developer rents a warehouse roof from the building owner and rides on the home owner’s property to install and operate the photovoltaic system. Power from the roof system feeds the local electricity grid, making it cleaner and lowering bills for customers who subscribe to the community solar program.

For example, Sun Landscapea community solar developer installed photovoltaic panels in four of its warehouses Duke Estate Registered subscribers in the northern part of New Jersey and then. One of them was Esleydy Cabada, a preschool teacher and mother of three in Avenel, NJ, who said her monthly electricity costs fell after she joined the community solar program in her area.

Ms. Cabada said there is no fee to participate in the program. He now receives two monthly bills, one from utility company Public Service Electric & Gas and one from Solar Landscape, but the total cost is less than he used to pay.

“I’m saving money,” he said, adding that he feels good about being “part of helping the planet.”

Community roof projects, such as Ms Cabada subscribed to, have another advantage: Because they’re largely out of sight, they don’t tend to generate opposition. solar farms on the ground do it sometimes.

And the warehouses themselves are already connected to the electricity grid and located near customers who can benefit.

“If you think of a distribution center as a building to distribute goods, it’s also a very natural place to distribute electricity, due to its size and location,” said Drew Torbin, CEO and consultant at Black Bear Energy. To real estate companies based in Boulder, Colo.

Black Bear helped set up a rooftop community solar project, said to be the largest in the country, at a warehouse owned by STAG Industrial in Hampstead, Md. The Trust leased the 1.1 million square foot building to Penguin Random House. It is used to store and ship Marvel Comics products and its 23-acre roof. Summit Ridge EnergyA solar developer in Arlington, Va.

Summit Ridge’s solar installation could generate 9.2 megawatts of electricity by adding renewable energy to the grid and lowering utility bills for approximately 1,300 households and businesses in the local utility’s service area, which includes Baltimore and 10 Maryland counties.

“These are mini power plants,” said Steve Raeder, CEO of Summit Ridge, which has completed 13 joint solar projects on warehouse roofs and is scheduled to complete 24 more this year.

Mr LaMont said STAG, which bought the building in 2013, has yet to replace the existing lighting and HVAC because these systems still work well. And despite sending solar power to subscribers, the warehouse built in 2000 runs off the grid, not from the rooftop.

Still, the community solar project achieves much more than just a smaller solar installation powering the building, said Mr Torbin. “It uses the roof to its full potential,” he said.