The same day last week the City Council helped us all breathe easier with a new law on chemicals in carpets, the Department of Environmental Protection released its new stormwater rule that encourages natural rainwater detention and retention, along with accompanying design guidelines. “Natural” here is not being used like the labels on cleaning products – here we are talking about honest to goodness mother nature. Rather than send rainwater to concrete tanks, sewers, and treatment plants, the new DEP rule encourages onsite reuse and natural infiltration.

It’s hard to overstate how much of a “180” this rule and the Green Infrastructure Plan represents for DEP, at least in terms of the principles involved. Until very recently, the only stormwater approach that mattered to DEP’s water engineers were those that could be measured in tanks and pipes. While we all know rainwater can be absorbed in the ground, directed into a rain barrel, and retained by a green roof, it wasn’t that easy to measure this capture. So it didn’t count at all for DEP. It does now.

The new rule is not a panacea for those who favor green infrastructure but is still a big step forward. The rule drastically reduces the allowable runoff from new construction and major reconstruction (a 90% reduction from previous limits). DEP will consider a range of approaches to reduce runoff including vegetative cover, green roofs, and permeable pavement. It will also consider open-bottomed detention systems that allow infiltration. Owners are required to provide maintenance for these systems so they work as intended. And finally, new developments next to a waterway must send rainwater into the waterway (rather than the sewer system).

Taken together, this rule implements 4 Task Force recommendations:

• SW 2: Reduce Stormwater Runoff From New Developments
• SW 4: Send Rainwater to Waterways
• SW 5: Encourage Innovative Stormwater Practices
• SW 6: Maintain Site-Based Stormwater Detention Systems

Another good day for green codes and a great way to kick off the New Year!

Green codes continue to fly off the City Council’s legislative shelf like bagels on a NYC morning. We can’t even keep track and we helped draft them!

Last Wednesday, the City Council gave New York a New Year’s present by prohibiting the sale, offer for sale, or installation of carpets and carpet cushions that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in excess of the Green Label Plus standards from the Carpet & Rug Institute. Implementing the Task Force proposal Health & Toxicity 1: Limit Harmful Emissions From Carpets, we believe this law is another first in the nation for a municipality. While many jurisdictions have standards on paints and coatings, carpets haven’t received the same attention.

But they should. For those who aren’t familiar with VOCs, they are a class of carcinogenic chemicals behind “new car smell” that cause a host of health problems ranging from respiratory ailments to major organ damage. While paints and coatings off-gas VOCs very quickly, it takes longer for carpets to release their VOCs thus increasing the likelihood that end users will be impacted. Interestingly, the vast majority of U.S. carpet manufacturers meet the Green Label Plus standards — the problem is with imported carpets. So, in one package we have a new law that improves the health of New Yorkers and also increases the competitiveness of American carpet manufacturers.

For ongoing updates on the status of the GCTF proposals, check out our Codes Status Report.

Bloomberg’s homepage is pretty much what you would expect from the world’s leading financial information firm: the market snapshot…a crawl of all the major indices, and of course the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ at a glance.  Below the logo, the navigation bar shows all the things relevant to the world of finance: News, Markets, Personal Finance, Sustainability…

Holy cow! “Sustainability”!? Last week, Bloomberg quietly offered up prime online real estate for this critical category. So far, it’s proving to be a fantastic source of national and international environmental news (I used it last week to track the depressing climate treaty discussions). But that’s the smaller point.

The big news here is the message Bloomberg is telling the finance industry: today’s businesses need to understand and track sustainability. One interesting question—is Bloomberg responding to a need voiced by the industry, or are they trying to make a market for it? Hopefully it’s a little of both.

Today brings another burst of Green Codes activity with the enactment of three new laws by the City Council. Urban Green played a critical behind-the-scenes role, working with the City Council, Mayor’s Office, and real estate industry for months to build support for these latest initiatives.

Thanks to today’s laws, there will be less soot in buildings due to better filters on large new ventilation equipment (Int. 592); grey, caustic streams of concrete wastewater from construction sites will no longer be filling the streets (Int. 576) [Read more about this one on Charlotte Matthew's post here]; and most new roads, driveways, and parking lots will contain 30% recycled asphalt (Int. 578). You can read our detailed summaries of the laws here.

Compared to major legislation we’ve helped develop, like the Greener Greater Buildings Plan, these bills are relative small fry. But bit by bit the codes are being improved, and collectively the Green Codes Task Force is having a major impact. With our advocacy, the Council has now passed 19 Task Force proposals, with 10 others enacted by other levels of government or in progress.

We can’t talk out of school, but I strongly encourage you to watch our newsletter and emails in the coming weeks for more good news on the codes front.

And if you value the critical work we’re doing on codes, I hope you will consider making a year-end tax-deductible contribution to our Advocacy Fund.

Like me, you’ve probably heard the sentiment that however much progress we’ve made on sustainability we are still way behind Europe; much of what we consider advanced is just standard practice over there.

For example, there’s an EU-wide mandate for new buildings to be net zero by 2021. The UK has mandated an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Many of Europe’s building codes are far stricter than our own…and so on.

Virtually all one hears on this subject is anecdotal, or so general that it’s not useful.  Here at Urban Green Council we’ve been asking ourselves for some time how much what we “know” about Europe’s building industry is accurate and what lessons there are for own industry.  Are the progressive measures similar across Europe?  Do they have programs on par with the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan? How do our best buildings (both new and existing) compare with those in Europe? What about the rest of the world, like Canada and Asia? And how much of the differences between these regions are driven by market characteristics like energy prices?

Our September conference, Global Lessons in Green Building: How NYC Stacks Up, will address these questions through two high profile panels.  One will focus on policy and codes, the other on market and finance forces.  We’ve developed the conference hand-in-hand with our partner, ULI New York, and are looking forward to the closing remarks from Clay Nesler of Johnson Controls. It’s our hope that learning about green building in the rest of the world will give us a better understanding of initiatives at home and expand our sense of what’s possible.

Please join us September 19^th.  A cocktail reception will follow the proceedings.

RELATED READING:
Greening the Concrete Jungle (The Economist 9.3.11): America’s cities are confronting climate change. They are also saving money.
Germany Sets Renewable Records (Grist.org 8.31.11): In the first half of 2011, renewables accounted for fully 20.8% of power production.
In Seattle, Work Starts on “Greenest” Office Building (L.A. Times 8.29.11): 1st big office building designed to carry its own environmental weight being built in Seattle, 1 of 12 “living buildings.”
Is This the World’s Greenest Neighborhood? (NRDC: Switchboard 8.24.11): Dockside Green in Victoria, BC was the first applicant for LEED for Neighborhood Development.
Western Grid 2050 (NRDC Switchboard 8.24.11): Provides a Clean Energy Vision & Roadmap for the West’s Economy and Environment

It took us awhile, but we finally totaled up all the Green Codes Task Force proposals that worked their way into PlaNYC 2.0. By our count, there are 16 Task Force proposals in PlaNYC that are not among the 36 in recently passed laws, new regulations, revised city programs or pending legislation (an additional 7 proposals noted in PlaNYC are part of this group of 36). This means the total number of Task Force proposals in play is 52—almost half of the original 111 recommendations! And this doesn’t even include many others that we know are being worked on by the City Council or Mayor’s Office but are not yet public. Our Codes Status Report provides the latest information on each proposal, including requirements for proposals that have become law.

Although PlaNYC specifically acknowledges the contributions of the Task Force, I suspect that the incorporation of Task Force ideas into PlaNYC was not always conscious. Many city agency staff actively participated on the Task Force, attending meetings, contributing to discussions, helping to generate ideas, and connecting with private-sector experts on sustainability. I would like to think that those discussions and interactions, along with the influence of PlaNYC, stimulated agency interest in sustainability. In short, the Task Force helped to create a sustainability culture within city agencies.

Pick any city agency that is key to sustainability, and you will now find senior staff  experts and green champions: Buildings has Deborah Taylor and John Lee; Environmental Protection has Carter Strickland and Sergej Mahnovski; City Planning has Howard Slatkin; DDC, which has long roots in green building, has David Resnick, Eric Boorstyn, and Tom Paino; and DCAS (which manages most of the city’s buildings) has Ariella Maron, Melissa Wright-Ellis and others in their energy group. This may seem so much the norm now that it’s taken for granted; yet most of these people occupy senior sustainability positions that didn’t even exist a few years ago.

The city employs a quarter million people and it takes a long time to shift the culture of such a large organization, which also has an upside. Now that sustainability is regarded as mission-critical, there has been a mindset shift among agency staff, allowing green initiatives to grow and prosper within the agencies themselves.  This may very well be as important a Bloomberg sustainability legacy as PlaNYC or any of the laws passed under his watch. So even if our next mayor doesn’t quite share Bloomberg’s passion for sustainability, it will still march on through city agencies and their committed staff.

If you’d like to learn more about green building in PlaNYC 2.0, join us on July 14th for a special presentation from Laurie Kerr, Senior Policy Advisor at the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, on these important initiatives. Event details are here.

“Sign here.” I’m buying a house in Brooklyn and a few weeks ago, at the contract signing, I learned something important. It would have been better if I had learned it earlier.

I found out that New York State law gives me the right to get 2 years of heating and cooling bills from the person selling me their house. Good to know. The next moment I initialed a contract provision waiving this right.

Why? The information was now irrelevant to me. I was in my attorney’s office. I had already calculated what I could afford and made my offer. It had been accepted and now I had the contract in front of me.

But I did consider property taxes before I made my offer. That’s because taxes were included in the listing for the property on the real estate agent’s site, and automatically appeared in their convenient mortgage calculator. Energy costs were nowhere to be found.

After addressing large buildings under the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, the city is now taking a look at the nearly one million buildings under 50,000 square feet. Energy Initiative 5 in PlaNYC 2.0 (“Improve energy efficiency in smaller buildings”) indicates the city aims to use information disclosure, like benchmarking and audits, to drive down emissions.

The lesson from my buying experience is that 2 or 20 years of energy data won’t matter to a financial decision that has already been made. In developing its approach to smaller buildings, the city needs to keep in mind that when information is available is just as important as whether it is available. For energy data to be considered by buyers, it needs to be treated just like taxes and included in the property’s listing as soon as it’s offered for sale.

Photo credit: Matthew Rutledge

A quarter of the initiatives in the latest installment of PlaNYC address green building, a far greater proportion than the 2007 plan, and many have their origins in the NYC Green Codes Task Force. The Task Force is highlighted in PlaNYC’s progress timeline and in the Energy chapter, in addition to being credited as a source in the Cross-Cutting Topics section on green building. PlaNYC calls generally for implementation of the Task Force report and its recommendations can be seen throughout the new plan – everything from reducing construction waste to establishing a standard sidewalk specification to improving water fountains in public parks. So a nod once again to the members of the Task Force for their hard work and success in shaping NYC policy.

Credit: 925 Bergen St, Brooklyn | © Big Sue LLC

Last week, the City Council passed three laws that will make New York City rooftops greener places. This brings the total number of NYC Green Codes Task Force recommendations that have been implemented by the Council to 16. Until the Mayor signs the legislation, they won’t be assigned a Local Law number so I’ll refer to them by their “Introduction” or bill number.

Two of these laws are about old regulations getting out of the way of green building. Introduction 341 implements Task Force recommendation Energy Fundamentals 14, Allow Large Solar Rooftop Installations. And Introduction 358 applies the approach to combined heat and power. Currently, the Building Code exempts a range of mechanical equipment on rooftops, including HVAC equipment and water tanks from building height restrictions. However, until these two laws were passed, solar and CHP equipment were not included in these exemptions – they are now.

Introduction 341 goes one step further for solar equipment. These same Building Code provisions limit the amount of rooftop that can be covered with mechanical equipment to 1/3 of the roof; otherwise it is counted as another floor of the building. Under the new law, solar equipment is not counted towards these limitations and can cover as much of the roof as permitted by other codes (such as the Fire Code).

The third law, Introduction 347, implements Task Force Proposal Energy Fundamentals 11, Reduce Summer Heat With Cool Roofs. This law updates existing Building Code requirements for reflective roof coatings to better align with LEED and clarifies exceptions to the standard. Under the changes, cool roof coatings will be required for reroofing of existing rooftops, and also for buildings constructed under the 1968 building code and normally exempted from many newer requirements. The law also clarifies that exemptions for green roofs apply to agricultural plantings and adds exemptions for:

*ballasted roofs;
*roofs used as playgrounds;
*areas under mechanical equipment or other rooftop structures;
*portions of roofs covered with decking materials.

You can read a far more detailed explanation of Introductions 347 (cool roofs) and 341 (solar), as well as all implemented NYC Green Codes Task Force recommendations on our web site.

Thanks to the City Council and their staff and the Mayor’s Office for makes these laws happen. Congratulations also to the Energy & Ventilation Committee of NYC Green Codes Task Force, whose recommendations formed the basis for these new laws.

This past Friday, the NYC Department of Buildings posted its 15-page rule implementing Local Law 84. Most of the rule (a good seven pages) is about how to collect and estimate energy consumption and what to do about incomplete data.  And if it takes that long to explain, it surely means compliance will require a substantial effort.

For those who would like step-by-step compliance instructions, check out our Benchmarking Compliance Checklist & User’s Guide.  It should help you determine which steps are required for your building, and which can be ignored.

Long term, there could be another way. The benchmarking law is about energy and water consumption. Yet of the 15-page rule, it takes only two sentences to explain how to input water data. How’s that? It’s that easy because those sentences explain that the Department of Environmental Protection will automatically upload the water consumption information to Portfolio Manager.

Because we don’t have a similar process for utility energy data, 24,592 private-sector buildings are or will be running around to get this information themselves. This is by far the biggest compliance burden for Local Law 84.

For many owners, benchmarking is part of “green stuff” and the easier we can make compliance, the greater their willingness to accept future regulations. Local Law 84 could be much easier to comply with if we had automatic uploading of utility data. So working with the city, Con Edison, National Grid, and the real estate industry to make this happen is at the top of our policy agenda.