Over more than a decade, commercial property executives in Germany and other European nations have come to rely on an energy-conserving mechanism that has yet to catch on in the United States: exterior sun-shading devices.

"As domestic developers gear up for the next round of activity and strive to minimize solar heat gain amid rising mechanical cooling costs, it appears many of America’s future commercial facades will be adorned with a variety of static or motorized shading systems," Commercial Property Executive's Brad Berton reports.

Shades, which Berton explains are often fashioned from extruded aluminum and tinted glass, take the shapes of "shelves, fins, tubes and the like are affixed in varying combinations to the new Hines-developed high-rises 300 N. LaSalle in Chicago, BG Group Place in Houston and the Devon Energy headquarters in Oklahoma City."