Around 85 percent of all the buildings that will exist in New York City in 25 years are already standing, according to reporter J. Alex Tarquino in this past Sunday's edition of The New York Times. 80 percent of the city's greenhouse gas pollution is created by building energy use -- with residential buildings taking up about one-third of that energy.
So however advanced green building methods become, however energy-efficient, we're going to make the biggest gains in cutting energy use -- thus lowering particulate and greenhouse gas pollution -- by transforming these older buildings.
Even though the New York way of living is inherently very energy-efficient, compared to other American cities or communities, we can do better, reports Tarquino:
Sure, New Yorkers have the benefit of an extensive mass-transit system, which means lower auto emissions, but the city’s residential buildings are less energy-efficient than those in many other places in the country, particularly in eco-friendly states like California and Vermont.“The main reason that New Yorkers use much less electricity is that our apartments are so much smaller” than homes in other cities, said Rohit Aggarwala, the director of the Long-Term Planning and Sustainability Office, part of the Mayor’s Office of Operations.
In fact, most big New York buildings, both commercial and residential, are wasting thousands of dollars a year on energy, the city says. Energy use by buildings accounts for almost 80 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, and residential buildings for about a third of that. These gases are released in creating the energy used to heat, cool and light the buildings, as well as to run myriad household appliances and gadgets.
Apparently, most co-ops haven't even picked the low-hanging fruit when it comes to cutting energy overhead by changing out their incandescent light bulbs in common areas for compact fluorescents. This simple step can be done by in-house staff and provides the satisfaction of an immediate and detectable reduction in the electric bill; my own co-op's bill went down by about $200 a year after we made the switch. (And then there's worker satisfaction: From what I hear, our super's happy not to be going up and down ladders all the time replacing burnt-out bulbs). And we're slowly installing the thermostatic radiator valves mentioned in the article, which allow much more precise control (than opening a window in the dead of winter, say) over how much heat a radiator emits.
Weatherizing is another simple step any co-op can take right away to cut energy costs.
So, how do we decide what our next steps ought to be? Tarquino profiles the experiences of co-ops that made changes after energy audits. A Manhattan co-op spent almost $8,000 updating its internal heating system, and paid $8,500 less on fuel in the first year alone. And, the apartment dwellers within were a lot more comfortable.
This kind of change, which makes back its costs within a year or two, is very appealing. Others take longer. It still takes around 15 years for an installation of solar panels on the roof to pay for itself, even after cashing in on currently available subsidies and tax breaks. New York State offers some help with paying for solar installations, and Mayor Bloomberg is apparently proposing an additional solar panel subsidy.
The NRDC's Ashok Gupta suggests that co-ops develop a broader perspective on assessing these costs:
Mr. Gupta of the Natural Resources Defense Council contends that environmentalists often sell themselves short by focusing too much on payback periods. “Nobody asks what the payback period is for a marble lobby,” he said. But if a lot of large commercial and residential buildings installed solar panels, he said, that could go a long way toward reducing the city’s overall impact on global warming.“From a societal perspective, the benefits are huge,” Mr. Gupta said.
One approach to putting a more realistic spin on how long these investments take to recoup their costs -- on how we would make back the expense of stemming the emission of climate-disrupting gasses -- would be to include the economic and health benefits of the ecosystem services that current methods of accounting take for granted -- all of which will be changed for the worse if climate change isn't slowed -- like our mild climate, wealth of urban forest, and rare encounters with extremely destructive storms.
