"You can't manage what you don't measure, and benchmarking the city's buildings lets us determine where energy costs can be reduced," Mayor Michael Bloomberg says in a statement. "Understanding the consumption across the city's portfolio is a critical component of meeting our goal of reducing city government carbon emissions 30% by 2017. As the largest building owner in the country's largest city, we can serve as a model for all building owners—particularly those required to benchmark next year."
Working with 28 separate city agencies, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services began the benchmarking project a year ago. Benchmarking measures the total electricity, natural gas, steam and fuel oil consumed in a property and adjusts for other factors—including building type, year of construction, number of workers and gross square footage–to help determine which facilities operate inefficiently. The idea is to allow the city to prioritize buildings for energy efficiency investments and monitor performance over time, according to a release.
The project was undertaken using the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Portfolio Manager benchmarking tool, which is a prerequisite in the US Green Building Council's LEED rating for existing buildings. Among the benchmarked buildings are libraries; police stations; firehouses; schools; courthouses; health, community, and family centers; and government offices.
One of these city-owned structures is 100 Gold St., a 1960s-vintage commercial office building in Lower Manhattan that now houses various municipal agencies, including the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Using energy data from the past two years, 100 Gold received a benchmarking score that demonstrates "great opportunity" to improve the property's energy performance via retrofits, the release states.
The retrofit project now being planned for 100 Gold will include modifications of controls, upgrades to the building management system, lighting upgrades, replacing cooling towers and 14 computer room air conditioners and installing energy efficient motors. The reduced energy consumption at the property will result in a total annual reduction of 775 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which means about $183,456 in reduced operating costs annually, the release states. Construction on the retrofit project is expected to begin in July 2011.
The Bloomberg administration expects to break even on its energy efficiency investments in 2013 on an annual cash flow basis, and projects that by fiscal year 2015 the city will have saved more on its energy bills than it has spent on all the planned investments to that point. To meet its 30% reduction goal by 2017—the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the PlaNYC sustainability initiative—the city must produce 1.68 million fewer metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually compared to 2006 levels
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
