Urban Green Council relies on our interns to help coordinate our monthly educational programs and special events, assist with research and  fundraising, and work on developing our national certificate program GPRO. The Summer 2012 Internship season is upon us, and we wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to our spring interns and thank them for their incredible work over the past several months.

JENELLE HOFFMAN (LinkedIn)
[EBies Intern] A California native, studying Sustainability Management as a Graduate Student at Columbia University.
I loved working this semester as the EBies Intern for this new and exciting competition!  I learned a lot about how sustainability initiatives can be implemented into existing buildings in order to improve our global carbon footprint.  One of the greatest perks of being an intern is being able to go to all the events and presentations by some of NYCs most forward thinking revolutionaries in the sustainable building sphere.  When I graduate from Columbia in December, I hope to find a job as a Sustainability Consultant either here in NY, or back home in San Francisco.

JAMIE KLEINBERG
[Research Intern] Recent graduate from Tufts University with a Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering.
As an intern at Urban Green Council, I’ve had the chance to learn about all of the amazing strides that New York City leaders have taken to create a sustainable urban environment. There have been so many opportunities to attend courses and events, with great speakers at the forefronts of their fields. My favorite part about working here has been all of the laughs, advice, and life-talks with the other interns and the rest of my coworkers. After this internship, I hope pursue a career in sustainable development, chemical engineering, or some fusion of the two!

ANDY LETWIN (LinkedIn)
[Programs Intern] B.A. Political Science from Skidmore College, focus on environmental studies and sustainable development.
As someone who is passionate about green buildings and sustainable development, my favorite aspect of this internship has been the networking opportunities. I have met so many wonderful people in a variety of fields. I have also enjoyed working with my great co-workers over the course of my time here.

With the internship winding down, I am shipping off to Vietnam for four months where I plan to teach English and travel. Upon my return, I hope to find full-time employment in the sustainability field!

HANAA ROHMAN
[GPRO Intern] A recent graduate of Princeton University with a degree in architecture and certificate in urban studies.
I’ve met and worked with a lot of amazing people during my time at Urban Green Council. This is what I value the most, as many of the issues we’re confronting could not be tackled without the passion and dedication of those involved. Among my favorite moments were interacting with industry professionals at our GPRO courses and attending many of Urban Green’s programs—both of which left me constantly thinking of the interactions between environment and design, especially in the context of the city. I’m very excited about all of the inspiring discussions I’ve had here and hope to continue developing these ideas in graduate school, where I’ll be pursuing a Master’s in Architecture.

CHARLOTTE STANLEY
[GPRO Intern] A California native and UCLA graduate with a BS in environmental science and environmental engineering.
I’ve had a great experience interning at Urban Green Council these past few months. I’ve learned a lot about green building practices from working on the GPRO Fundamentals and Electrical Systems curriculums. The best part of the internship was attending the Urban Green Council events (and eating the delicious food at those events!) with my coworkers. While I don’t know where my next move will take me, I know I’ll welcome any opportunities to show my commitment to a more sustainable future.

Several years ago, a group of us Urban Greeners were chatting about how to scale up energy efficiency in existing buildings – as we so often do for fun.  Someone sighed and said for the umpteenth time, “The problem is, correcting operating schedules and insulating steam pipes just isn’t as sexy as installing solar panels or bamboo flooring…” At which point I thought, “Sexiness is in the eye of the beholder isn’t it?  Fashions change.  We need to make efficiency and existing buildings sexy, even glamorous!”  And with that, the idea for the EBies was born.

Clearly we had a problem.  The things that really work were considered tedious and drab, while flashier, expensive strategies with minimal impact were getting all of the attention.  We needed to invert the value system, and make the inspired building operator, the clever retro-commissioner, and the brilliant auditor visible and glamorous.  An awards program made sense, but in those pre-EBie days, the accolades tended to be given to architects who had designed dazzling new green buildings.  The engineers, landscape architects, and lighting designers who were part of the design team were mentioned in a hurried mumble as the architects waltzed away with the award – despite the fact that most successful projects are really collaborations.   And existing buildings weren’t even on the radar.

A great example of an industry that has tackled this issue is the motion picture business.  The Academy Awards don’t just reward the actors and actresses with an Oscar; they recognize the best cinematography, the best sound mixing, the best makeup, and a host of other specialties that are required to make a great movie.  Over the decades, the Oscars have honored and built up depth in all of the supporting professions, which has undoubtedly contributed to the strength of the American movie industry over the 80-some years since the awards were introduced.

The Oscars have been so successful, in fact, that they have spawned the Grammys, the Tonys, the Emmys, and even the Obies – the awards for Off-Broadway shows.  Now it’s time for the EBies, Urban Green Council’s awards for the best work on Existing Buildings.  Like the Oscars, the EBies will recognize the range of expertise required to make a high performance existing building.  There’s a category that recognizes the best building operator, another that recognizes the building owner that initiated and funded the most low-energy renovation, and others that reward specific categories of building improvements, like best lighting retrofit and best water improvement strategy. So, we promise you…the EBie will be a green building award that is inclusive and recognizes all the right people.  And they will have a glamour all their own!

I was recently part of a discussion about the pros and cons of legislating energy code changes versus incentivizing the market and was reminded of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Top Ten Reasons for Building Energy Codes. It’s a great quick list of the benefits of green codes and how they can encourage innovation while also bringing up the industry overall. With buildings consuming 39% of the country’s energy, code improvement is a cost-effective and extremely important step in moving towards energy independence and reducing our CO2 emissions.

10. PROVIDE a common foundation for evaluating, regulating, and incentivizing building design, construc­tion, technologies, and performance.
9. SUPPORT energy conservation and efficiency actions beyond minimum code levels.
8. HELP drive the development and deployment of new building technologies and design strategies.
7. PROVIDE a cost­effective step toward mitigating problems associated with growing demand for energy and power resources.
6. INCREASE the use of energy efficient technologies proven through incentive programs, freeing up resources to focus on new, more efficient additional technologies.
5. PROVIDE a common basis upon which to educate the building design and construction community in energy efficiency.
4. SAFEGUARD owners and tenants from long­ term financial burdens that can result from short­term design and construction decisions.
3. CONTINUE to progress in terms of stringency, scope, and enforcement emphasis—all of which provide new jobs or opportunities to enhance the skills of the current workforce.
2. HELP protect the natural environment from unnecessary emissions.
1. ENERGY CODES not only save money, but also help to reduce needless consumption of energy to heat, cool, light, ventilate and provide hot water for newly built residential and commercial buildings constructed without adequate energy efficiency features.

The 2010 Energy Conservation Construction Code of New York State (ECCCNYS-2010), became effective December 28, 2010, and promises to have a major impact on the state’s energy use. We think this is a significant improvement from the 2007 code; it’s rigorous but allows for innovative approaches and emerging technology. To help architects and engineers understand the code changes as well as the process for compliance, Urban Green Council and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) have developed Cracking the Energy Code, funded by NYSERDA. Since its launch this past September, together we have trained over 500 professionals in New York City and have begun offering the course throughout the state.

To view or register for the courses in New York City and Upstate New York, visit Cracking the Energy Code.  There you’ll find a full course listing, resources on related laws, and our just-released sample of the course manual.

Photo Credit: US Army Corps of Engineers

A question for all you design professionals out there: When was the last time a project you designed was built exactly as shown on your drawings?

The answer, I imagine is “never.”

There’s a myth outside of the construction industry that the architectural team hands over a giant set of blueprints and specifications to the contractor and then a team of construction workers execute those plans with nary a glitch.  The misconception is that the construction team “just follows plans” when in fact there is a very entrenched but varying culture on construction sites that determines how workers behave and how projects gets built.

To improve the performance of our buildings, much higher levels of coordination is required between the construction, design and operations teams as well as among the trades working on the project.  To build green, it’s critical to get all of these individuals on the same page and change the culture of the job site to include sustainable work practices.

To help the construction industry teach the workforce about sustainability and green work practices, Urban Green Council developed GPRO, a national training program to teach the people who build, renovate and maintain buildings the principles of sustainability combined with trade-specific green construction knowledge.

We’d like to share an excerpt from Trades Going Green in  the January 2012 issue of GreenSource magazine. Bruce Buckley features GPRO prominently as he writes about the importance of training and collaboration when building sustainable buildings.

“Changing the culture is an important first step in training trade contractors to think green, says Steve Lehtonen, senior director of environmental education with the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO). “The most important thing to me is the psychology of what we’re doing,” says Lehtonen, who runs IAPMO’s Green Plumbers training program. “We want them to buy into green practices.”

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC) launched its Green Roof Professional (GRP) designation program to improve the delivery of green roofs. Jordan Richie, manager of education and accreditation at GRHC, says the program sees a mix of designers and contractors in roofing and landscaping. “We want to stress a collaborative design and installation approach to any green roof,”

Knowledge of green systems and techniques should be a skill set that all contractors have, not one reserved for accredited professionals, says Mike Callanan, executive director of the National Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee (NJATC) of the National Electrical Contractors Association and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.“

The takeaway is that properly trained construction teams who understand green work practices and concepts will build better, higher-performing buildings.  As we bring GPRO nationwide, it is our goal to make all buildings be greener as workers become trained in green practices and behavioral norms change.

Ellen Honigstock, a member of the Urban Green Council Chapter Task Force for LEED Regionalization 2012, shares their initial findings on recommendations for LEED RPC 2012:

The USGBC recognizes the importance of projects that address region-specific environmental issues in their design; these Regional Priority credits were first introduced in the LEED 2009 rating systems.

Urban Green Council, along with all the other chapters of the USGBC, is currently evaluating which credits to prioritize in LEED 2012 for the five boroughs in New York City and Rockland and Westchester Counties.

Starting in late summer 2011, the Urban Green Council Chapter Task Force for LEED Regionalization 2012 began to meet monthly.  Shortly thereafter, the Chapter Task Force (CTF) identified five general categories of regional priority issues: Water, Air, Energy, Ground and Resources.

Focusing first on what the important issues should be rather than where they might occur, the CTF compiled a comprehensive list of 17 possible priority issues. These priorities were compared with the ones identified in LEED 2009 Regionalization in order to maintain as much continuity as possible.  The list was also compared with the recommendations in the Urban Green Council Green Codes Task Force Report to identify which environmental issues would benefit most from green incentives, rather than from proposed legislation.

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A little over 10 years ago, I began a four-year stint as a legislative attorney at the New York City Council. Back in those pre-PlaNYC and pre-Green Codes Task Force days, it was no easy feat to get the Mayor’s Office to concentrate on environmental legislation and we had a big one cooking at the City Council: Local Law 86, which required all city owned and funded construction over $2 million to be built to LEED Silver.

One of the people who would attend meetings at the Mayor’s Office on this legislation was an elegant, soft-spoken woman who seemed to know everything about the building code: Deborah Taylor. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she was one of the principal advocates for this green building legislation within city government. I later discovered she was probably the first person to propose that city agencies meet to develop a broad sustainability agenda – this became the “Mayor’s Task Force on Sustainability,” the precursor to PlaNYC. Without her,  PlaNYC may never have happened. Deborah also recognized that New York City would need to adopt its own version of the state energy code, both to close state loopholes and so the city could make its own amendments. This led to the city finally starting to enforce the energy code for the first time since it was adopted in the 1970s. Another Deborah special. And so on, again and again and again.

Long before Urban Green Council or the U.S. Green Building Council New York, before PlaNYC and the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, before the Office of Long-term Planning & Sustainability, before the Green Codes Task Force, and before Local Law 86 there was Deborah Taylor. Working behind the scenes and without public credit, she nurtured much of the green building revolution we’ve seen in city government and her imprint is on so many policy accomplishments in the last decade.

Last month, Deborah retired from city government after nine years at the Department of Buildings, and eight years at the School Construction Authority before that. A great public servant, she is one of New York City’s unsung green heroes. Let’s all celebrate her enormous achievements and hope that other champions within the Department of Buildings will continue in her footsteps.

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.

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.

Back in 2007, in the world of high rise construction, Franco was the kingpin of New York City concrete.  His price to supply concrete to big construction projects reliably beat his competitors and he seemed to be getting rich doing it.  You didn’t want to ask too many questions.

At the time, I was working for one of NYC’s leading construction management companies and circulating within the concrete industry to build support for better concrete washout water management.  The rinsing of concrete trucks and equipment at construction sites generates highly corrosive water that flows down the street and into the sewer.  During rain events, these sewers empty into the East and Hudson Rivers as combined sewer overflow (CSO) events.  Other cities and states had more stringent rules about discharging concrete washout water in areas where it could harm people and enter waterways, but in New York City, the Department of Environmental Protection just required the water to be filtered through filter fabric or hay bales, in an attempt to reduce the amount of concrete hardening in the sewer and clogging drains.  Filtering was only partially effective at that and did nothing to address the public danger and environmental impact of the water’s chemical makeup and alkalinity, which is comparable to Draino®.  Draino is a product that used to be used to unclog waste pipes until it was found to corrode right through the pipe.

All the concrete trade organizations and manufacturers my colleagues and I met with agreed the practice was polluting, and even the manufacturers seemed surprised the DEP was allowing it.  When asked why the practice persisted, the manufacturers explained, “so long as the city isn’t making the waste water our problem, it’s not in our financial best interest to claim it.”  The most cost effective and environmentally preferable means of handling the washout water generated by rinsing the chute of a mixer truck, which is the primary source at most construction sites, is to capture it off the bottom of the chute with a pail, and return it with the truck to the concrete manufacturer’s own plant for treatment.  All concrete batch plants have wastewater treatment systems, and as the Cement League commented, “It make sense – a construction manager buys the concrete, not the concrete truck and equipment.  Therefore, any waste generated in maintaining this equipment should be the supplier’s.”  Franco, however, added one more kernel of insight: “I have beautiful trucks.  I’m not going to hook or attach anything to them unless some code requires me to.”

Technically, New York City already had a law on the books prohibiting corrosive water from being discharged down the sewer.  But because the manufacturers resisted claiming the waste water as their problem, construction sites were limited to two options: letting the water evaporate onsite in bins or sending a wastewater pump truck around to the site daily to suck it out of a dumpster and take it to a special waste water treatment plant.  The first was only possible at World Trade Center-sized sites and the latter was a logistics hassle, expensive and generated additional vehicle miles (environmental impact), so no one did it.  To get Franco and his kin to play ball in managing the wastewater in the most cost-effective and environmentally preferable way for a project, a better code would be required.

Which is exactly what the City Council passed today. Effective July 1, 2012, NYC will have a new building code prohibiting concrete washout water from entering sewers and catch basins.  Most importantly, the code offers special dispensations to mixer trucks so that the water from rinsing their chute is returned to the originating concrete plant with the truck. Read Urban Green’s detailed summaries of the laws here.

Let’s just hope Franco doesn’t chip the paint on any of his trucks when he installs the tank racks.

* Editor’s note: This name is a pseudonym.  We were concerned “Franco” might knock on our door looking for Charlotte.

Photo credit: Daniel X. O’Neil