Torchlight #27 | Its Not A Wrap

Torchlight It’s Not A Wrap

By: Nancy E. Anderson, Ph.D., Executive Director, The Sallan Foundation Issue: Torchlight #27 Date: November, 2009 0

Torchlight #27 It’s Not A Wrap Readers are rarely surprised to find look-back and look-ahead musings in December’s media. My final Torchlight of the year honors this tradition, although the issues most closely tracked during 2009 may lack closure or even legible milestones. For those who have read the fine print and followed the progression of four New York City bills aimed at improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings and the means to measure both baseline performance and improvements, as of this writing there is no denouement. After months of private meetings, public hearings, second looks and more meetings, the latest draft of the four bills is circulating. However, the City Council has yet to vote. The Mayor’s staff says that timing is an issue and wants to see a vote by the end of December. Although calendar years are just conventions in the flow of time, on January 1, 2010 a City Council will be seated with many new faces and, as conventional wisdom would have it, Mayoral control of the public agenda could be up for grabs starting the first day of Michael Bloomberg’s final term as Mayor. The legislation contains some significant changes from the bills publicly vetted at June’s Environmental Protection Committee hearings. Gone is the requirement for building owners to undertake those energy efficiency retrofits that have a five-year return on investment. In its place, owners would have to hire licensed professionals to undertake “retro-commissioning” for identifying how to get building systems functioning up to their designed capacities. Only municipal buildings will have to undertake energy-related alterations and even those will be restricted to work whose cost can be recouped in seven years. For all other covered properties, instead of the capital costs associated with retrofits, the redrafted legislation requires owners to incur costs to remedy materials or equipment deficiencies that can be paid from a building’s operating budget. The Mayor’s office asserts that such actions will achieve 85% of the energy savings of the original bill’s impact. Some critics claim that retro-commissioning will be meaningless without a reliable to-do list, but that could fall to next year’s rule-making tasks. Meanwhile, during what’s left of 2009, the question remains: can removing retrofit language quash the opposition of commercial and residential property owners to the bills? This will be answered by how the City Council votes, if it votes, on the four bills. Many real estate owners face high vacancy © 2009 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org

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Torchlight #27 It’s Not A Wrap rates, narrowed private financing options, and the disruption of the NYSERDA multi-family program, which had offered expertise and financial assistance for energy efficiency improvements. All this makes the promise of energy savings over time, hedging volatile energy prices or combating climate change worth less than the near-term calculation of self-interest. For readers focused on cutting the size of the City’s carbon footprint, the greatest energy efficiency gains could come from the bill stipulating that most renovation work performed in New York City must meet the relatively stringent standards of the municipal energy efficiency code. This code will no longer just apply to new construction or very large alterations. If this bill is passed, almost all additions, alterations, renovations and repair on existing buildings or building systems will have to conform to the energy code. In plain English, this is a big deal. The energy benchmarking bill is the next on the greener greater legislative list. It calls on property owners to use existing USEPA Portfolio Manager software to gather and organize data on energy and water consumption. The legislation acknowledges the limits of the current software to handle buildings that house data centers (with their ravenous appetite for electricity) and the peculiarities of the City’s great vertical density and steam systems. Certain reporting specifics will be waived for such conditions. The bill also limits the responsibility of landlords for getting consumption data from tenants. The Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability will be responsible for preparing and electronically posting reports on benchmarking findings. Unfortunately, buildings won’t have to post their results on site or compare their performance and operating costs to similar buildings. New York could learn a thing or two from the EU’s post-a-notice-in-the-lobby approach and be more innovative in harnessing the competitive power of the marketplace when it comes to energy usage and costs. How about offering zero interest loans (secured with federal stimulus money) from a revolving fund for the first one hundred benchmarkers? For those readers deep in the wording weeds and with an interest in enforcement, all four bills still have a certain “Hail Mary pass” quality. While the Buildings Department expects that between the learning curve of licensed architects and engineers and the learning curve for the City’s own building plan examiners, many of the code’s new energy and disclosure provisions will become part © 2009 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org

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Torchlight #27 It’s Not A Wrap of routine planning and practice The Department’s biggest stick is the threat of going to the State to seek license revocation of those professionals who try to end run statutory requirements. Although that threat is easy to make, it’s hard to execute and is a wrong-sized tool in an otherwise poorly stocked compliance toolbox. Meanwhile, 2009 saw other newsworthy energy, climate and job developments. State legislation to expand the venerable affordable housing weatherization program was drafted by the Center for Working Families and signed by Governor Paterson in October. Worker training, funded in part by a one-time $112 million infusion of funds redirected from the sale of carbon dioxide emissions allowances, is supposed to begin this year. While this funding strategy has its environmental critics, it could galvanize employment in many communities and provide direct fuel and utility savings for homeowners. As well, with the infusion of federal stimulus funds, which nationally will allocate $5 billion over three years (with $349 million for New York State according to Urban Agenda) to improve insulation and sealing around windows and doors in the homes of lower income Americans this state program will get a big boost while growing the chances for a green-collar sector of New York's economy. Now, the Obama administration is reported to be looking into establishing a “cash for caulkers” program. Said to resemble the New York model made possible with November’s State vote for a law that enables cities to issue PACE bonds, “cash for caulkers” could expand a national capacity for increasing the number of energy efficient home and the volume of green collar jobs. Something New Yorkers can look forward to during the holiday season is release of a study by the Urban Green Council (formerly the New York City Chapter of the United States Green Buildings Council) that will identify obstacles to more sustainable building practices embedded in City’s current building code. With 150 recommendations and running several hundred pages, there will be plenty of fine print to pore over on long winter nights. Anticipating 2010’s scheduled review of the Code, this report should be an eco-Santa’s list of specifics for greening the code.

© 2009 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org

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Torchlight #27 It’s Not A Wrap Of course, since money doesn’t grow on holiday trees and these days it’s rarely found nicely wrapped beneath them, tracking the arrival of eagerly awaited federal stimulus dollars makes the Stimulus Tracker page on the Mayor’s website another must-read. Direct federal block grant funding to New York City for its energy efficiency efforts totals $80.51 million. What does this figure entail? Nine project categories will be supported in whole or in part (it’s not entirely clear from the information posted in the website). For instance, the largest program allocation targets $27.28 million for the energy efficient upgrades of municipal buildings. The federal money is in addition to $60 million appropriated in the City’s FY 2010 budget for this purpose. In another category, $16.1 million, originally slated to assist financially stressed property owners in undertaking statutory building energy retrofits, will now go to a pilot loan program. For the present, only the “Administration of the City’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy” is underway. The rest should kick in next year. Torchlight’s regular readers may recall NYC’s Local Law 86. Signed into law by the Mayor more than three years ago, it requires new municipal construction and substantial renovations to meet LEED Silver standards. In January 2009, I wrote about the first published Local Law 86 Annual Report and had aspired to write something about this year’s report. But, until the Mayor’s office posts the Annual Report, there is nothing to be said. Has Local Law 86-covered construction fallen victim to the economic downturn or has the City’s attention strayed? It is evident that the Mayor has come to see 2007’s PlaNYC 2030 as a power tool for doubling the number of local green jobs over the next decade. 2009 saw a blizzard of reports and press releases announcing the City’s intention of extending that Plan in the direction of green economic development and job growth. The Economic Development Corporation issued a directory of federal, state and city programs for promoting green economic growth in addition to a menu of financial resources for this purpose. City Hall amped up its high performance building vows in a report which sets a goal of creating 19,000 new jobs through its greener greater building plan. If that wasn’t enough, the Mayor also unveiled thirty initiatives to grow the green urban economy. This growth is projected to come from energy-efficient building, on-site renewable energy installations, carbon trading and finance as well as greener neighborhoods. Accordingly, an © 2009 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org

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Torchlight #27 It’s Not A Wrap alphabet soup of entities like the Economic Development Corporation, Small Business Services and CUNY are supposed to create a supporting environment for this green economy. True to the Administration’s prose style, these publications are filled with precise numbers and lists of actions to be taken. It’s good to see so many ideas in a city that is in pressing need of new economic activity and good jobs. Will this be the start of something big? Again, stay tuned in 2010. Finally, let no one think that the climate-friendly building arena was monopolized by the public sector this year. The Empire State Building is undergoing a major energy efficiency overhaul as its owners seek to reposition and up-market this icon of the Art Deco era. The 1980’s vintage World Wide Plaza will start a similar upgrading in 2010. From the perspective of financial resources for making energy efficient, high performance buildings New York’s new normal, the Community Preservation Corporation has made a $1 billion loan pool available to apartment owners for energy performance upgrades. Loans will be repaid from savings achieved on electricity and fuel consumption. During its first month of operations, the CPC has given $18 million to owners of ten buildings, including a 375-unit complex in Upper Manhattan and a low-income development in Westchester. This kind of targeted financing couldn’t have come at a better time. New York and other US cities have begun to head in more sustainable directions as the 21st century ends its first decade. Still, there is much to learn from what we’ve done and much more to wish for. So before signing off for 2009, it’s only fair to say that it’s not over yet. Stay tuned and see you next year! Nancy Anderson is the Executive Director of The Sallan Foundation.

© 2009 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org

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