Empire State Building Aims to Teach Efficiency Lesson

As a structure, the Empire State Building is about as far it as can be from the one-room schoolhouse. But the Manhattan landmark has taken on a little of the function of a little red schoolhouse. The Empire State Building is now a virtual classroom for lessons on how to plan and carry out energy upgrades in existing buildings to try to maximize both environmental and economic benefits.

The Empire State Building has developed an ambitious plan for efficiency upgrades that includes retrofitting chillers to improve their efficiency, upgrading HVAC controls, rebuilding operable windows to insert a film between the two panes of gas and adding argon gas, and replacing air handling units with VAV units.

Those measures are the end result of a process for upgrading existing buildings that everyone involved is touting as a model for others to follow.

The upgrades were planned by a team that includes the Empire State Building Company, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Rocky Mountain Institute, Jones Lang LaSalle and Johnson Controls. Upgrades identified by the team — both base building measures and those in tenant spaces — have a 3.1 year payback. The upgrades are expected to reduce building energy use by 38 percent if tenants carry out all the projects recommended for their spaces. Steps are being taken to encourage tenants to proceed with upgrades, says Clay Nesler, vice president of global energy and sustainability, Johnson Controls. For example, demonstration spaces are being built out with the upgrades, and new design standards have been created for the building.

The project was planned to serve as a template that could be used to upgrade other existing buildings. Seven steps were identified. Number one on the list: get in synch with current capital projects. If a building system or component is already scheduled for replacement, the incremental cost of moving to a more energy-efficient unit will be far easier to justify than a replacement undertaken purely for energy gains, says Nesler. What’s more, by looking at all capital projects together, facility executives may find opportunities to save both capital dollars and energy costs.

For example, at the Empire State Building, more efficient windows will greatly reduce cooling needs, so the chillers could be retrofitted instead of being replaced with a new chiller plant.

Another important point in the process is to consider the carbon impacts — as well as the economics — of efficiency measures. The Empire State Building team modeled options that maximized the reduction of carbon emissions associated with electricity use. It also looked at a design that maximized bottom line impact. “Something in the middle was funded,” says Nesler. “For a slight additional investment, we could nearly double energy efficiency.”

To learn more about the project, click here.