A Concrete Jungle Going Green
From PlaNYC to OneNYC: New York City is working towards an energy efficient built environment.
A city distinguished by its skyline and dense blocks — it comes as no surprise that three-fourths of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions result from the high level of energy consumed by its substantial building stock. The reality of its consequence reached a pivotal point with the impact of Hurricane Sandy on local residents in 2012. With over 90,000 buildings in the inundation zone, 2 million people caught without power and $19 billion in damage, climate change was no longer an abstract idea looming at a distance. It affected our city, encroached into our backyard and stopped all aspects of our daily lifestyle.
NYCC, a leading team of climate and social scientists, and risk management experts, advise the mayor on issues related to climate change and adaptation. According to their studies, a series of challenges await the city within the next decade. The average temperature is expected to rise 2ºF — 3ºF by 2020. Severe results like heat waves, coastal flooding and sea level rise are also expected to accompany this temperature increase.
In this case, buildings both contribute to and are affected by the changing climate patterns. Taking the crucial role of buildings into account, former Mayor Bloomberg made a call of action to incorporate environmental goals into the existent economic goals. PlaNYC is a sustainability initiative which, first, assess the existing infrastructure and, then, works towards measurable goals which address climate change. Due to the high number of existing buildings, PlaNYC’s main focus is to retrofit them through enabling new building codes. The policy outline helps explain building codes by describing them as the DNA that controls the construction and renovation processes. Strengthening building codes is the easiest and most cost effective way to improve the energy efficiency of the existing building stock.
“PlaNYC has set out to lower citywide greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030. To meet this ambitious goal, energy expenditure must be tracked. I thought it would be interesting to look at the data spatially,” writes Jill Hubley, a New York City based web developer.
Using graphics to explore environmental data, Hubley created a map of New York City showing the greenhouse gas levels emitted by each property lot. “As the many initiatives under PlaNYC are carried out, it will be important to track the benchmarking data and see what properties remain problematic.”
Four local laws were enacted under PlaNYC in 2009, known as the Greater, Green Building Plan (GGBP). Benchmarking the energy and water usage of buildings is mandated to ensure that the codes are met by both private and public buildings. Auditing and retro-commissioning the energy equipment of large buildings every ten years is also required to maximize the use of current technologies.
These laws focus on single property lots larger than 50,000 square feet and multiple property lots larger than 100,000 square feet. A small number of large lots proportionally consume a majority of the total energy citywide. This is evident in Hubley’s map which shows a concentration of high emissions on larger properties. “Looking at the map, it’s obvious that high emissions are being generated by a cluster of buildings in Midtown Manhattan, which is not surprising, given the size and type of buildings in that neighborhood.”
An important component of Bloomberg’s initiative is authorizing public access to the annual benchmarking data, available through local law 85. Providing transparency of the collected data is an important step to gain the support and trust of local residences in PlaNYC. Knowing the energy efficiency of a building is valuable property information for buyers and sellers, which also serves as a market strategy. This act incentivized private property owners to meet the standards initiated by the city. The combined result of these four laws made GGBP the largest single policy with the greatest carbon impact.
By identifying challenges and collecting large amounts of data to inform policy decisions, PlaNYC laid a strong foundation for Mayor de Blasio’s own sustainable building policy. OneCity: Built to Last, established in 2014, calls for a more drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Not only does it aim to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050, but also strives to convert city buildings to use cleaner heating fuel. Under de Blasio’s policy, greenhouse gas emissions from buildings are “expected to fall 10% by 2025, the equivalent to removing more than 700,000 vehicles off of the road.” Unlike his predecessor, de Blasio also prioritized increasing the energy efficiency of affordable housing. A critical part of OneCity allows the benefits of energy efficiency to be adaptable to all income levels, incorporating environmental sustainability into a larger social development plan.
With urban areas responsible for over 70% of the global CO2 emissions, large cities in the US and across the globe are at a critical crossroad to adapt energy efficiency policies into their built environment. Building policies such as PlaNYC and OneCity: Built to Last provide successful initiatives to start a larger dialogue on sustainable built environments. If New York leads by example, other major global cities will follow.
