The emerging green building industry is expecting to see a surge in interest from business customers over the coming years as rising energy prices bring the payback period for many green building improvements below the three-year horizon demanded by many firms.

That was the view of experts speaking at the official opening of building services firm NG Bailey's new green office showcase in Strathclyde, who argued that the return on investment (ROI) calculations for both new green buildings and retrofitting projects are strengthening rapidly as energy bills climb.

Mark Andrews, chief executive at NG Bailey, said that the expected payback period for the new Solais House development – which the company claims is the first standard-plan office building in the UK to attain the government's A-rated energy performance certificate – shortened by at least a year between the original planning stage and the completion of the building, primarily as a result of rising energy prices.

The company said that the many green features found in the building, including a ground source heat pump, photovoltaic solar windows, rainwater collection tank and automated building management system, meant that the £5.5m project cost £850,000 more than a standard development of the same size. But Andrews said that with energy use 42 per cent lower than for a conventional office, he was now expecting to see a return on its investment within five years.

Opening the new building, CBI director general Richard Lambert said that five-year payback periods were still "longer than would be acceptable to a typical public company", but added that there were encouraging signs that ROI periods were getting shorter.

"Costs [for green buildings] will get cheaper as more companies gain experience of the approaches involved, energy costs will keep getting higher, tenants will start to demand more energy-efficient buildings and we have regulations coming," he said, adding that this combination of factors would help bring ROI periods down, making investment in greener buildings more attractive to business leaders.

He also argued that improvements to the built environment represented the most cost-effective means of cutting carbon emissions for many firms. "Some of the measures required to cut carbon emissions are very expensive – I have heard estimates for the cost of carbon capture and storage of €100 (£81) per tonne of carbon saved – but improvements to the built environment are not an economic cost, they save you money," he observed.

ROI periods could prove shorter still if the so-called "soft benefits" associated with energy-efficient buildings are accounted for, according to UK Green Building Council chief executive Paul King. "If you get just a few percentage points' improvement in staff productivity or retention because people like working in the building, that can have a huge impact," he argued.

Andrews said that there were already signs that the natural light and free air ventilation system employed at Solais House was proving beneficial to staff morale and urged more firms to try and account for these soft benefits when considering green building projects.

However, he warned that while the commercial case for investment in energy-efficient buildings was strengthening, there were still structural issues within the construction industry that was hampering adoption of green technologies.

He argued that the "breaks within the building supply chain" between architects, developers and sub-contractors made it very difficult for firms to assess the whole-life costs of a building and make the case for green systems that have a higher upfront cost but deliver longer-term savings. He added that only by getting more involved in every stage of the building project and forcing different contractors to communicate could firms hope to ensure energy-efficient technologies and designs are delivered.

Noting that the bulk of the innovations included in the Solais House development had been in existence for many years, Andrews also bemoaned the traditional conservatism of the building industry and its failure to embrace more energy-efficient designs and technologies. "When we were first discussing the plans for Solais House, one of our non-executive directors who used to work for BEA, said that the energy management system we proposed was basically the same as has been used in submarines for years," he said. "The building industry needs to get better at taking advantage of technologies developed by other industries. "

NG Bailey is now investigating turning Solais House into a zero-carbon development through the installation of either a wind turbine or a micro hydro plant in the local river. Andrews said that the company still had to "run some more numbers" and overcome several planning hurdles but was confident it could turn the building into a net energy contributor.