Enterprise Rent-A-Car Makes $150M Green Building Pledge

[Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that the initiative would impact thousands of locations.]

Enterprise Rent-A-Car declared its commitment to green building last week with the announcement that it would spend $150 million over the next five years making new and existing locations more energy- and water-efficient.

The company has developed a new green building standard to guide its investment called the Enterprise Sustainable Construction Protocol (ESCP). Enterprise Rent-A-Car expects ESCP could rack up energy and water savings of up to 35 percent.

The initiative will impact thousands of new and existing locations, according to Lee Broughton, director of corporate sustainability for Enterprise Holdings, parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

“Right now, we thinking it’s going to be about 1,000 projects over the first year, a combination of new locations and retrofitted locations,” Broughton said during a phone interview last week.

The company should see a return on investment within five years for the 2 percent premium it may pay for the materials to build and retrofit locations to ESCP standards, which cover seven areas ranging from sustainable materials and energy use to recycling and water efficiency.

“We would look at a five-year model as a healthy return for us,” Broughton said.

The company is no stranger to the green building arena. Enterprise Rent-A-Car opened a car rental location in June at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport that has earned a LEED-Silver certification through the U.S. Green Building Council, which it said is an industry-first. The headquarters of the company’s fleet management arm is also LEED-certified, as well as a call center.

Enterprise is communication the building initiative through a newly unveiled website called Driving Futures. There users can peruse a virtual tour of the O’Hare location, in addition to learning more about Enterprise’s entire range of sustainability efforts, including a carbon offset program, renewable fuels research and long-term 20/20 sustainability vision.

Image courtesy of Enterprise Rent-A-Car.