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The Building Blocks of a Clean Environment
By: Timothy S. Carey
In January, 2007, the Power Authority’s main administrative office building
in White Plains, NY, was dedicated as the first existing building in New York
State to receive Gold recognition by the U.S. Green Building Council. The designation
may seem obscure to most people. I think of it as a kind of environmental Good
Housekeeping seal. It means that the building is not only highly efficient in
its use of water and energy, but that it’s a healthy building to occupy,
with an interior of filtered air, non-toxic paints and furnishings. What’s
more, nearly every item used in the building is recyclable.
The idea is clearly catching on. On January 1 of this year, a law took effect
in New York City requiring that most City-financed non-residential new construction
and renovations be built to U.S. Green Building Council LEED (Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design) standards. The McGraw Hill 2006 Smart Market
Report
forecasts by 2010 nearly ten percent of all new non-residential construction
will be green.
The global corporate elite have joined the movement. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase, and even Toyota have moved into green buildings as have a number of
prominent law, accounting, and consulting firms. Employers are sold on them
not simply
because of their public relations value, but because studies show that green
workplaces can boost productivity by as much as 15 percent a year - an added
payback of between $9,000 and $10,500 per employee. Put another way, these
buildings provide an annual rent rebate of $45 for every square foot of green
space.
There are other selling points, too. When PNC Financial moved into its green
building in Pittsburgh, employee turnover fell by 50 percent. At Toyota, absenteeism
fell by 14 percent. And who wouldn’t be satisfied by a space that uses
as little as half the electricity of a conventional building? Savings like that
go right to the bottom line, which is why Barron’s Magazine predicts
that trillions of dollars of conventional commercial real estate will dramatically
lose their value unless these properties, too, are retrofitted to be green.
Four years ago I led a team that created the nation’s first “green” residential
high-rise building: The Solaire, at 20 River Terrace in Battery Park City, which
achieved levels of energy efficiency 35 percent greater than prescribed by the
state’s energy code. The Solaire consumes 65 percent less energy during
peak summer periods than buildings of comparable size and relies on solar energy
for 5 percent of the building’s base electrical load. The building even
includes its own wastewater treatment facility - the first in the nation inside
a multi-family residential building - alongside another innovative system that
re-uses storm water.
What I learned from this experience was that a green building can cost no
more to build than a conventional building. What’s more, the operational savings
from green buildings can be discounted over the building’s depreciable
life to produce a much lower net present value. Better still, McGraw Hill reports
that green buildings deliver much higher occupancy rates and rents. And on
account of their relative scarcity and high desirability, green buildings return
an annual
average of 7.5 percent in net appreciation.
Green buildings are such a good idea that the New York Power Authority is
putting its expertise in this area to help others. This year, our cumulative
investment
in energy-efficiency and other clean energy initiatives has surpassed $1 billion.
This represents over 1,500 environmental makeovers at schools, police precincts,
fire stations, hospitals, museums, libraries, and government buildings across
New York State. The efficiency gains are equal to the displacement of 1.8 million
barrels of imported oil a year and the avoidance of more than 750,000 tons
of greenhouse gases. As Frank Lloyd Wright observed, “Study nature, love
nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
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