Decarbonizing New York’s buildings and optimizing building performance - by Janet Joseph

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow recently provided the opportunity for NYSERDA to join leaders to share ideas about working together, across sectors and borders, to tackle the climate crisis. The time to act on climate is now and the only way to create lasting change is to work with partners both globally and locally to accelerate lowering carbon emissions.   When it comes to buildings, we have an opportunity to improve building performance and create better places to live and work—while we are reducing carbon emissions.

The commercial real estate industry is one of our valued partners. Buildings and transportation account for just over half of statewide gross greenhouse gas emissions and in New York City alone, there are approximately 3 billion s/f of existing commercial office and multifamily buildings.

Many real estate companies have already stepped forward such as Empire State Realty Trust, Hines, Vornado, and L+M to develop replicable pathways for integrating energy efficiency and electrification measures. As part of the Empire Building Challenge they, along with seven other commercial real estate leaders, have committed to achieving carbon neutrality in 131 buildings, totaling 52 million s/f, in the next 10-15 years.

While this program focuses on building retrofits, its industry goals are similar to our prestigious Buildings of Excellence program for new construction. This program has recognized more than 40 multifamily projects from developers, including companies like Hudson Companies and Jonathan Rose Companies featuring visionary architects to stimulate the design, construction, and operation of very low or zero carbon emitting buildings.

Both programs are sharing the advances made and helping industry adopt innovative strategies that create better buildings. In these early days of building decarbonization, solutions can seem as unique as buildings themselves, but NYSERDA and its partners are starting to crack the code and map out sets of decarbonization solutions that work for different building types and different asset classes which can be adopted over time as part of strategic capital planning.

Heat pumps are one clean energy solution that show great promise for wide-scale adoption. They offer flexibility and are applicable to a wide range of buildings. As New York’s grid is getting cleaner and cleaner, powered by renewable energy, building electrification solutions like heat pumps will grow in market share.

Heat pumps can work for single-family or multifamily homes and campus facilities and can be expanded to community thermal networks that reach whole city blocks and business districts. They are also a good fit for retrofits and new construction making them a worthy investment to lower energy consumption and improve occupant comfort—delivering both heating and cooling in one system.

While there are misconceptions about how well heat pumps work in cold weather, they are two to four times as efficient as conventional heating and cooling systems, perform well in our region and other cold climate regions, and keep inside temperatures comfortable all year long. NYSERDA recently debuted a video that provides information on the benefits of heat pumps under our $700 million NYS Clean Heat partnership with utility partners that provides educational resources and rebates.

The community thermal networks, mentioned earlier, are in the early stages of adoption in New York. A pilot program to connect multiple buildings through shared heat pump piping and infrastructure launched in 2021 and has funding available to help building owners reduce upfront capital costs of converting to heat pumps to optimize building performance.

We have seen a range of innovative projects proposed by industry under this program - accelerating decarbonization from a building-by-building approach to a block-by-block and community-by-community model. More than two dozen community thermal studies are underway in New York featuring projects that connect city blocks in Queens led by Endurant Energy and encompassing offices, a supermarket, retail and community spaces, to one in Rochester from EMCOR serving dozens of downtown buildings. A unique construction project on Coney Island features a pair of multifamily residential towers and 139 affordable housing apartment units. Developer LCOR, working with EcoSave, will install a system that is expected to be 100% electric (HVAC and domestic hot water).

We are proud to support these innovative partners and projects and hope you can join us in helping transform New York’s building landscape to lower carbon emissions, improve access to clean energy, and empower sustainability. Our website nyserda.ny.gov has many resources to support projects that help New York meet its climate and clean energy goals and know that these are pathways we can pursue together.

Learn more on NYSERDA’s programs at nyserda.ny.gov.

Learn more on the NYS Clean Heat initiative visit cleanheat.ny.gov.

Janet Joseph is the senior vice president at New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Albany, N.Y.