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!

The zoning drawn up in 1961 did not envision a city of new green buildings, nor did it foresee the retrofitting of older buildings. Today, we are at a crossroads with respect to the performance of our buildings. We know that they must accomplish much more than they were once designed to do – they can save energy and generate clean, renewable power; reduce the burdens they place on city infrastructure; support our ecology; and provide a healthier environment for New Yorkers. We also know that we cannot accomplish this only with new, high-performing green buildings. We must also improve the performance of our existing buildings, which represent 85 percent of the buildings we will have in 2030.

However, as highlighted by the Green Codes Task Force – convened by the Urban Green Council at the request of the Mayor and the Speaker of the City Council – zoning sometimes discourages or outright prohibits green building features.

So we need to continue a retrofit of our Zoning Resolution.

In the last ten years, the Department of City Planning has completed over 100 neighborhood rezonings and numerous amendments to the text of the Zoning Resolution, to promote transit-oriented development and sustainable growth in New York City. Through a series of green initiatives, we have improved the green infrastructure of our neighborhoods with street trees, front yard planting, and stormwater management for parking lots; enhanced alternatives to private automobile ownership and use with bicycle parking requirements and car sharing; and promoted the availability of healthy, fresh foods with our FRESH program.

Today, we are proud to unveil our latest initiative, Zone Green – the most comprehensive effort of any U.S. city to sweep aside zoning obstacles to the construction and retrofitting of green buildings. City Planning is proposing amendments to promote energy-efficient and green design. Zone Green would:

• Exempt external insulation from floor area and yard requirements, to enable existing buildings to add external insulation within their property line;
• Eliminate penalties for high-performance envelopes in the way floor area is measured, by exempting a portion of thicker, better insulated walls from floor area calculations when buildings substantially exceed energy code standards;
• Enable solar panels to be added on top of any building roof, by allowing them as a “permitted obstruction” above a height limit;
• Allow sun control devices such as vertical or horizontal shades or screens to project from building facades over required open areas;
• Allow more flexibility to accommodate a wide range of rooftop features, including green roofs and stormwater management equipment, boilers or cogeneration facilities, recreational decks, and stair and elevator bulkheads that provide rooftop access;
• Foster local food production by encouraging rooftop greenhouses, by allowing waiver of floor area and height limits for greenhouses on top of buildings without residences or sleeping accommodations; and
• Allow wind turbines to exceed a height limit on taller buildings and in locations near the waterfront, where winds are most conducive to power generation.

Zone Green will also include other legislation to improve building performance.  City legislation would tighten the energy performance standards for the building envelope, ensuring long-term energy efficiency by addressing the longest-lasting elements of the building. In addition, many buildings built before 1961 are subject to the New York State Multiple Dwelling Law (MDL), and would not be able to take advantage of the proposed provisions for external insulation. So the Department is preparing draft legislation for targeted amendments to the MDL to make possible the external insulation of these buildings.

This proposal builds upon other efforts under PlaNYC, including the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, by using zoning to encourage buildings to outperform the New York City Energy Conservation Code. Removing zoning impediments to green buildings will give building owners more choices to make investments that save money, save energy, and improve the quality of our environment. By making these improvements possible, Zone Green can unlock the potential for as much as $800 million per year in energy savings.

Today the Zone Green text amendment begins the public review process, which includes referral to all 59 Community Boards, five Borough Presidents and Borough Boards, and review by the City Planning Commission and City Council, and is expected to take roughly six months. We have complete information about the proposal and public review available on DCP’s website, at nyc.gov/planning/greenbuildings.

This proposal would not be possible without the contributions of the Green Codes Task Force, whose recommendations helped spark the Zone Green effort. The continuing engagement of task force members has also been critical in shaping this proposal. We would like to thank Urban Green Council and the Green Codes Task Force for their continuing guidance and support as we take this critical step to bring our buildings into the 21^st century.

You can read the zoning text Amanda refers to here. Full disclosure: It is a little abstract and dry, but that’s just the way laws must be written.  It’s worth plowing through it if you would like to be involved in the process, since there will be public hearings and the opportunity to comment between now and February 12th, 2012.

Find out more on January 11th from the architect of Zone Green, Howard Slatkin, City Planning’s Director of Sustainability. After Howard’s presentation, a panel of industry representatives and Green Codes Task Force members will discuss the implications of the new zoning proposals. Details are here.

The place to start sustainable practice isn’t on the roof with solar collectors, but in the boiler room with insulation and controls. So says a new study carried out by our colleagues at Steven Winter Associates and HR&A Advisors and featured in the New York Times.  The study, headed up by Marc Zuluaga of the Green Codes Task Force and There Are Holes in Our Walls, shows that energy efficiency retrofits  resulted in a 19 percent savings on fuel bills and a 10 percent savings on electricity across the 19,000 units studied.

Urban Green Board Chair Jeff Brodsky, the president of Related Management said: “This study proves that the assumption that you can’t rely on savings when doing a retrofit isn’t true. It may not be perfect or exact, but you will see savings.”

There was also wide variability, with some buildings showing much greater savings and (presumably) some showing less. The hope is that this study can be used as a tool to persuade not only the landlords to retrofit, but also the lenders to underwrite larger loans based on projected savings. “We are trying to catalyze a new financing market to satisfy the growing demand for retrofits,” said Susan Leeds, the chief executive of the New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation.

The full report, commissioned by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and Living Cities, will be released later this month.

Full disclosure: Of course I think it’s a great study; I contributed some of the data from earlier work on NYSERDA’s Assisted Multifamily Program.

Related Articles:
Showing the Benefits of ‘Green’ Retrofits [6/1/2010 New York Times]: Announcement of the study.

Photo credit: LeSimonPix

The results are in!  The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has released its annual State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, and New York has edged out arch-rival Oregon for the #3 slot.  We’re still substantially behind the two big dogs, but there was drama in the top bracket as well, as Massachusetts lapped California to become #1.

How we did it: Of course the first thing you’re wondering is how we managed to outdo Oregon and become #3.  The most likely answer might be that we grabbed free agent David Bragdon, who directed much of the greening of Portland, and brought him here to head up Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability.  That, however, was a city-to-city maneuver, and the Scorecard, based on statewide performance, shows no indication that it was a factor.  Rather, New York scored 1.5 points higher on “Utility and Public Benefit Fund Efficiency Programs and Policies” and Oregon beat us out by half a point on “Building Energy Code,” leaving us a net lead of 0.5 points. (We were tied in the other four categories.) This is way too close for comfort, and we’ll have to grow the advantage substantially to ensure continued dominance.

The Big Picture: To put all this in perspective, the Scorecard allocates a total of 50 possible points among six categories.  Massachusetts won with a total of 45.5; California was second with 44.0, we were third at 38.0, and Oregon is now fourth with 37.5.  Yes, we would have to span a substantial 6-point gap to compete in the top rank.

How Can New York Prevail? The areas in which we can most easily rack up additional points are the “Utility and Public Benefit Fund” area, where we got 15/20, and “Transportation,” now at 6/9.  Looking at the detailed breakdown of the first category (p. 6 if you’re reading along), we got 4.5/5 for Electricity Program Budgets, but only 2.5/5 for actual Savings.  So we spent the money, but we need meters on almost everything!  And our Gas Program Budgets were deemed weak and only rated 1/3. This stems from all the years when the PSC and NYSERDA functioned off a System Benefit Charge that was initially structured around electric efficiency, and is only now being fully extended to include gas.  We scored the maximum in the other two subcategories for “Utility and Public Benefit Fund,” so no room for improvement there.

On “Transportation,” I’m from New York City, where we probably rate a 9/9, so it really falls to those upstate SUV and pickup truck drivers to give us an assist. But 3 big points are just waiting to be picked up, if only we could extend rail and bus service.

For Building Energy Codes, we only scored 6/7, while four states got 7 and Georgia got 6.5 (?!?).  What was our problem?  Well, to get 7, your code had to exceed the 2009 IECC or ASHRAE 90.1-2007, and the authors deemed that we had only met those codes. Clearly, New York State should adopt the New York City energy code, which by definition exceeds the NYS code, and therefore meets the ACEEE requirements for a 7.  Alternatively, we could plead that since almost half the population of NYS is now governed by the more stringent NYC code, on average the state deserves a 7.  I’m sure a highly-paid lobbyist would be able to make this case clearly to the ACEEE  staff over an expensive lunch.   

California Strikes Back: Clearly outraged at being pushed off the high podium, the California Air Resources Board started the 2012 competition early by adopting a statewide cap and trade system for greenhouse gasses on October 20th. This was a shrewd move by California, since Massachusetts had already scored 7/7 on “State Government Initiatives” and can’t go any higher, while if California can push their 5.5 up to a 7, which this ambitious effort certainly deserves, they can tie Massachusetts on that basis alone.

Race from the Bottom: Three states – Mississippi, Wyoming, and (dead last) North Dakota – have total scores of less than 5/50.  They should consider it a growth opportunity – Alabama went from 3 to 9/50, and Nebraska from 4 to 10/50, earning both of them commendations for “most improvement.” I’m not so sure they deserve praise at this level – some state will always be ranked 51^st (DC is a state in the Scorecard), but even the lowest ranked state could have a score of 20 or 30/50 if they were trying at all.  How about “still fails to meet expectations”?

Full Disclosure: OK, the Scorecard is a little dense, I haven’t read the whole thing, and you probably won’t either.  But it is a lot of fun to dip and skim through, with great gobs of detail for the items that interest you most.  I especially recommend Chapter 3 on Building Codes – a very clear explanation of different vintages of codes from the IEC and ASHRAE90.1, the role of the DOE and ARRA, and all that confusing stuff.

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

Good News!  GPRO: Construction Management has been named as one of the acceptable credentials for the NYC Department of Buildings’ new Sustainable Contractor Designation Program.  Later this year, more GPRO courses will be listed as the program is expanded to include more professions. Notably, consumers will be able to search the DOB database to determine if the contractor they are considering hiring has the credentials to build green. Here’s details from the DOB:

On July 19^th, New York City Department of Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri launched the new Sustainable Contractor Designation Program.  This initiative recognizes those individuals with expertise in environmentally friendly construction who are working to meet today’s increased demand for new, green technologies and reduce the City’s carbon footprint. The program identifies contractors who demonstrate knowledge in sustainable practices through third-party certifications/credentials.

Contractors who choose to participate in the program agree to promote the use of green technologies to their customers and report these projects to the DOB. Additionally, the program allows consumers to search for and identify contractors with expertise in green practices.  Those licensees who the DOB indentifies as sustainable will have an icon in the shape of a green leaf displayed next to their names in the Department’s Buildings Information System (BISWeb).

Currently, only general contractors for 1-, 2- and 3-family homes can participate in the program. Later this year, the program will be expanded to allow master plumbers and electricians to participate.

The DOB has identified a list of acceptable credentials that will qualify a General Contractor for this designation.  These credentials include GPRO Construction Management Certificate, LEED-AP (Homes or Interior Design and Construction), Certified Passive House Consultant, BPI Certified Professional, Energy Star Home Builder and several others.

Quite a few people have commented on the recent proposal by Apple to build a kind of suburban spaceship headquarters (pictured above) in Cupertino, CA.  Alexandra Lange at Design Observer has noted that suburban HQ’s are decidedly retro, and Lloyd Alter at Treehugger is reminded of the passage from Lord of the Rings, “One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” and predicts the end of the creative giant (Apple, not Sauron.)

There is something kind of creepy about the uber-slick aesthetic Apple has successfully applied to their gadgets and retail stores being applied to such a massive structure. With a diameter similar to the Pentagon, the pop cultural reference it brought to mind for me was Revenge of the Sith. But that’s all totally subjective. What struck me most forcefully was the difference between this particular design solution and the solution proposed by another global tech company trying to house a rapidly growing workforce: Google.

First, let’s review the Apple proposal. The building, though only 4 stories in height is massive and is designed to provide space for 12,000 employees. Presenting the project to Cupertino City Council (see the video here),  Steve Jobs points out that the current site is only 20% green space and that their proposal will increase this to 80% landscape, achieved by placing “most” of the parking underground. I put “most” in quotes because in addition to underground parking below the main building there is a huge above-ground parking structure proposed alongside I-280. Jobs says this parking structure is 4 stories because they want everything on the site to be “human scaled,” but one wonders how a parking structure that appears to be 2,000 feet long can be considered in any way approachable. To give you a sense of the scale of parking required in places like Cupertino (where everyone drives everywhere, for everything)- Apple will reduce the surface parking by 90%. It’s a laudable achievement, but still leaves 1,200 surface parking spaces on the site. Another scale adjustment for you, the “café” in the new building serves 3,000 people at a sitting.

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Just in time for our upcoming workshop on the LEED for Neighborhood Development standard, NRDC has published a Citizen’s Guide to LEED ND.  Billed as a “user-friendly and accessible” document, the Guide has been developed to provide residents, policy makers and others the tools to assess the sustainability of development proposals- using the technical framework of the LEED-ND rating standard.  You can download and gather more information (include a sweet little smart growth slideshow) about the guide, here.  And Kaid Benfield of NRDC blogs about the new document, here.

Dockside Green, Vancouver, Canada. Photo Credit: Lawrence Wong

On June 17^th we are holding our first full-day workshop on the LEED for Neighborhood Development standard.

Although our organization largely focuses on buildings, we’ve mentioned many times the great importance we feel should be placed on community planning. Where your building is located, and the contextual fabric of that location, is often more important than the design of the building itself.  It has always been clear that choosing a greenfield site over an already urbanized location has major environmental repercussions: from simple disruption of ecology to less efficient utility distribution.  Since climate change has become the most pressing issue of our time, we have come to understand that even just within the limited focus of energy-use there is a clear imperative to curtail sprawl.  The transportation and energy impacts of a building’s location were codified into the metric of “Transportation Intensity” by Alex Wilson in a quietly transformative article at BuildingGreen.com in September of 2007.  Here were the statistics that backed up many of our suspicions that, say, replacing a poorly performing inner-city high-school building with a LEED platinum school 20 miles outside the town was not an unequivocally good thing.

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The Emerging Professionals (EP), a committee of Urban Green Council, is a coalition of young professionals in the New York City area involved in the green building movement through hosting educational seminars, networking and other social events. Jessica Cooper (LB Architects) and Nicole McGlinn (KPF), in conjunction with UGC Board Member Molly Zinzi (Google) and Caitlin McCusker (Urban Green Council), are the leaders of EP.

On April 28th, twenty-eight young professionals joined us for a rapid-fire charrette challenge that asked them to direct their creative energy towards the Active Design Guidelines. The national Natural Talent Design Competition is taking a year hiatus to build the 2010 winning projects in New Orleans, of which one of the top four winners is our group’s submission: RAMPed UP.  Undeterred, we decided to offer an alternative: a local charrette competition.

To prepare for the upcoming challenge a week prior, the seven teams met us at one of the premier examples of Active Design in NYC: the High Line.  Scavenger hunt style, they navigated the city and recorded three examples of ‘good’ Active Design and three examples of ‘bad’ Active Design. Aside from informing them that they would need to ‘get creative’ on the 29th, no other information was disclosed.

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