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SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Green renovations and retrofits will save the Empire State Building more than $4.4 million annually, reduce energy use by 38 percent, cut carbon emissions by 105,000 metric tons over a 15-year period and provide a payback in slightly more than three years.
The statistics on the greening of the Empire State Building are almost as dizzying as the 102-story New York City landmark. And the lessons that can be learned from the efforts by the project partners -- building owner Anthony Malkin, Johnson Controls Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Clinton Climate Initiative -- are numerous as well.
Clay Nesler, the vice president of Global Energy and Sustainability for the Building Efficiency business of Johnson Controls Inc., detailed learning points in a "One Great Idea" session at the State of Green Business Forum in San Francisco today.
"The great idea is actually a combination of a bunch of really, really good ideas," Nesler said. They included:
- Use of an integrative design process. Typically the collaborative method is used to develop a holistic building design. In this case, the project partners used the technique to look at 60 potential improvements and narrow them to eight action areas.
- Careful selection and timing of the eight measures, which will work together to realize the projected savings. For example, upgrading the glass in 6,514 double-paned, double-hung windows and retrofitting the air conditioning eliminated the need for building a new chiller plant for the property -- retrofitting the existing one did the job. "We saved so much money by not building a new chiller plant, that we paid for all the other improvements," Nesler said.
- Realizing, contrary to conventional wisdom, that more than half the savings for the building could come from tenant spaces -- and taking steps to help make that happen including changing the leasing structure, and submetering for all tenants so that they pay for their own energy and have the incentive to make improvements. In addition, "every single tenant gets a dashboard" to help them measure and manage energy consumption, Nesler said.
The article opens with a
The article opens with a shocking statistic that proves to be a contractual guarantee: the sustainable retrofit of the 102-story, 80-year-old New York City landmark will “provide a payback in slightly more than three years.” This number should dazzle green developers and prospective clients even more so than the projection that the retrofits will save the building over “$4.4 million annually, reduce energy use by 38 percent, [and] cut carbon emissions by 105,000 metric tons” in the next 1.5 decades. A rapid return on investment is extraordinary in building construction, especially the subsector of green development.
Johnson Controls' Clay Nesler credits three main factors with the success of the project: an integrative design process, which can reveal joint projects that are less costly than strings of individual ones; the delegation of energy monitoring/authority to individual tenants (rather than a top down approach); and the full support of the building's owner. I'd say those are three ingredients to almost any successful green building project, large or small.
I’m glad President Obama
I’m glad President Obama touted the Empire State Building retrofit success story during his efficiency speech at Penn State and that the project is getting so much media attention. The high-profile nature of the Empire State Building, the astounding $4.4 million in annual savings, and its 3 year project pay back will help mainstream America grasp the huge potential savings of energy efficiency.
The incredible buzz around this story is an important step forward to faster adaption of similar retrofits, and not a moment too soon: of the 4.8 million commercial buildings in the United States, only 4000 are Energy Star certified.
I’m curious to know how the project managers were able to alter the leasing structure to install individual meters and thus incentive efficiency. This seems like a critical, but underutilized step to achieving efficiency gains in commercial buildings.