by Annemarie Kretschmann
In New York City, building operations alone generate about 80 percent of the city’s overall carbon emissions. That’s a lot of carbon.
The mayor and the city council proposed the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan earlier this year to help the city attain its goal of achieving a 30 percent reduction in its annual greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. The city council passed the initiative on December 9. The measure includes a provision that would require owners of all buildings larger than 50,000 square feet to pay for energy audits of those properties. About 23 percent of the city’s 95,000 buildings are larger than 50,000 square feet. This is important news for building owners and operators in New York.
The initiative also makes the energy code stricter, requires buildings to undergo a yearly benchmarking of overall efficiency, and mandates lighting upgrades in large buildings. Owners must also give each tenant data about individual electricity consumption. Knowing how much energy they use often leads tenants to reduce consumption.
Photograph courtesy of Armel Nano.
The measure initially contained a provision that required building owners to pay for energy efficient retrofits based on the results of the audits. Under pressure from property owners, however, the mayor dropped the requirement to make those retrofits, although the other provisions are still mandatory (“Bloomberg Drops an Effort to Cut Building Energy Use,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/science/earth/05bloomberg.html?_r=1). One objection property owners raised to that requirement was that some leases do not allow building owners to pass on the upfront costs of retrofitting to tenants. As the measure stands, owners can decide for themselves which changes to undertake in response to the energy audits.
Benchmarking of commercial real estate will be performed using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager tool, which is also used for the Energy Star performance rating system. The resulting energy use index will be expressed in BTU/gross square foot, and is proposed to be listed each year on the tax assessment roll. Energy audits today in NYC are costing approximately $0.10 to 0.20/square foot and typically start with a building walk-through, EPA measurement calculations, utility use analysis, building use analysis, capital project review, documentation review, and a resulting report which costs $0.50 to 0.70/square foot and provides three levels of recommendations—zero cost, moderate cost, and capital cost improvements—as well as forecast payback periods.
For more information about Huntsman Architectural Group, visit HuntsmanAG.com.
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