Pat Lobb knows exactly what it means to be green – $8,000 a month.

That's what he says he saves monthly on his electric bill at Pat Lobb Toyota and Scion in McKinney, the first new-car dealership in the U.S. to be certified as a green building.

And while the car business might seem an odd advocate of environmentalism, North Texas has more green car dealerships – three Toyota stores – than any region in the U.S. Moreover, the number of eco-dealers is growing nationally, many of them motivated by what they see here.

JOHN F. RHODES/DMN

A banner in the the drive-in at the Toyota of Rockwall dealership announces it is the first LEEDS "Gold" dealership in the world.It is one of three LEEDS certified "green" dealerships in the region.

"As other dealers saw what Pat had done, it just made sense for them to follow," said George Irving, retail development manager for Toyota Motor Sales.

Mr. Lobb's dealership was certified by the U.S. Green Building Council two years ago. One of the newest Toyota facilities in the area, Toyota of Rockwall, is the first dealership in the country to be certified "gold" by the building council. Mr. Lobb's was built to a slightly lower "silver" standard.

"Now that I've done the gold, got the green, I look back and say I would have beat myself senseless if I hadn't done this," said Steve Jackson, owner-general manager of the Rockwall dealership.

The two remain the only car dealerships in the U.S. certified by the building council, Mr. Irving said.

The third Toyota green store, Jerry Durant Toyota in Granbury, awaits certification for its new dealership, which features geothermal cooling and heating.

While altruism drives some of the decisions to go green, such facilities are likely to continue increasing because they make good business sense, officials say.

"I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Mr. Lobb said. "We're saving $8,000 to $10,000 a month on electricity compared with similar-size buildings. We also wash about 3,000 cars a month, and my water bill for this month for the entire dealership was $600."

He says his 56,000-square-foot dealership cost 7.6 percent more to build than a conventional building. Originally, he said, he figured it would take three to five years to recoup the higher cost from his savings on overhead.

"With energy costs going up, I think we'll do it in three years or less," Mr. Lobb said.

The $7 million dealership – which inspired Toyota of Rockwall and Durant Toyota – is filled with recycled materials and features a highly efficient roof and air-conditioning system, double-pane windows, lighting that dims in sunlight and a means to capture and reuse its air-conditioning condensation.

Coincidence played a role in the number of green Toyota dealerships here. Throughout the '80s and '90s, Toyota did not have as many dealerships as it thought it needed in this market. The need to expand provided an opportunity to go green with some of the new stores.

Now, the green base that Toyota established in North Texas is encouraging dealers elsewhere. One of the newest is being constructed in Conway, Ark. Toyota dealers in Eugene, Ore., and Salt Lake City also are building green facilities.

"We have 15 dealerships in development to become eco-facilities," Mr. Irving said. "My thought is we will see 10 more a year for the next couple of years. At some point, we could be doing 30 a year."

Toyota has about 1,200 dealerships in the U.S.

Many dealers probably won't need a lot of persuading once they hear the claims of $10,000 or more in savings on monthly overhead expenses – a substantial sum for businesses that typically earn a net profit of 2 percent or less.

"That's probably 10 percent of a lot of dealers' rent," said Drew Campbell, president of the New Car Dealers Association of Metropolitan Dallas. "It's a huge competitive advantage."

Mr. Jackson, the owner-general manager of Toyota of Rockwall, had no intention of building a green dealership when he toured Pat Lobb's store with his wife and teen-age daughter more than a year ago.

"I didn't know what a green building was," said Mr. Jackson. "My daughter and wife really initiated the conversation."

His wife, Barbara Jackson, said she and daughter Chelsea told Mr. Jackson that the family needed to build their 70,000-square-foot facility as a green dealership. The store opened in February.

"It's the right thing to do, the responsible thing to do," said Ms. Jackson, vice president of the dealership. "We could just be selling Toyotas or we could be doing something good."

"It has made a difference in my life – how I use water, how I dump my trash," Mr. Jackson said. "But there are practical considerations, as well. We are saving $25,000 a month in overhead. For what we save in energy costs, it's like having a building half the size that it really is."

Don Allen, general manager of Jerry Durant Toyota in Granbury, said the dealership – which uses 93 wells on its property to cool its 27,000-square-foot building – hasn't been open long enough to know how much it will save.

"But we figure we've only got one world and we want to take as good a care of it as we can," he said.