NYC neighborhoods have some of the smallest per capita carbon footprints in the country -- and they do it just by living smaller, living closer and driving less.  It’s just one more thing that New Yorkers can feel superior about. However, they’re not gloating – they’re acting. The city is listening to all the smart people that comprise the Urban Green Council, the New York Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and is enacting Zone Green, “the most comprehensive effort of any U.S. city to sweep aside zoning obstacles to the construction and retrofitting of green buildings.”

We recently attended the Clinton Global Initiative 2011, in NYC, and had an amazing time learning about the exciting and important projects that community leaders, around the globe, are currently working on.

You can watch the full panel discussion here:

The Empire State Building was awarded LEED Gold Certification last week. SeriousGlass technology was used in the retrofitting of the building’s 6,514 dual pane windows. As reported by the Environmental Leader, the no-disruption retrofit glass system  iWindow is the same technology adapted and priced for wide-spread commercial use. (Check this space soon for another NYC historical landmark announcing a SeriousGlass window retrofit.)

This is a great like-minded article (“Cut costs and create jobs by retrofitting schools,” by Boonsri Dickinson), similar to our recent blog post on making schools more energy efficient. Dickinson interviews David Myers, president of Building Efficiency at Johnson Controls, and asks some important questions about the value of retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient.

With the economy struggling, it might at first seem counter intuitive to invest money in energy management solutions that make buildings smarter and more energy efficient. Energy upgrades and retrofits can appear to be ‘nice to haves’ rather than ‘need to haves’ when budgets are tight.

The Empire State Building has been in the news again lately for its enormously successful retrofit project, which just earned it a second ENERGY STAR certification by the US EPA. From the Empire State Building press release: “The certification signifies that the property’s energy performance is part of a select group of commercial office buildings, new and old, across the nation that have received this accolade. ENERGY STAR recognition was a stated objective in the iconic property’s overall sustainability retrofit initiative launched in April 2009.”

Facebook’s early move from the East Coast to Silicon Valley made for great cinema in the movie “The Social Network.” What if you’re a hot pre-IPO social networking company born near Palo Alto? What could be your ‘statement’ relocation? If you’re LinkedIn, the business person’s choice, you take a floor in New York’s Empire State Building. According to the deal’s broker, Sacha Zarba of CB Richard Ellis, LinkedIn executives recognized the advantages of associating itself with the NY landmark’s brand – both its historic symbolism and its new reputation for being a ‘green’ skyscraper.

Just as Passive House and other energy-efficient construction methods are lowering total cost of ownership of residential homes, energy efficient building materials create significant value in the commercial space as well. Case in point:  the Empire State Building, where the New York Times is reporting a plan to create a publicly traded real estate company featuring the building.

In an article heralding commercial building deep energy retrofits as the unsung and unseen heroes of global efforts to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, TIME magazine touts the Empire State Building’s energy retrofit as “one of the biggest success stories to date.” With a payback of less than three years and 38% annual energy reduction, building owner Tony Malkin has achieved his goal of making the Empire State Building a flagship project to prove that energy efficiency makes sense for the bottom line.

Planet Forward, a special project developed by George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, provides an Internet forum for experts and interested public to provide their ideas for solutions to energy, climate change and sustainability challenges.

With energy efficiency measures nearly complete, including our unique window retrofit, Empire State Building manager, Tony Malkin, now turns his attention to addressing the building’s energy supply. Just recently announced, the Empire State Building will purchase 55 million kilo-watt hours of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) - enough to offset its entire yearly energy consumption.  These RECs, more than any other commercial purchaser in New York buys, will come from wind power facilities owned by NRG Energy.

Planet Forward's special report on PBS investigates the paradigm-shifting retrofit project undertaken by Tony Malkin to make the Empire State Building a pioneer in energy efficiency.  The report highlights the importance of improving energy efficiency in existing buildings because the approximately 4.8 million commercial buildings in the U.S. account for 18% of our energy use.  However, perhaps most importantly, Planet Forward emphasizes that proving the financial case is the key to making commercial retrofits part of the mainstream - "green for green's sake only appeals to those who are already green."  That is exactly what Tony Malkin has set out to do.  The eight measures he implemented, including upgrading all 6,514 dual pane windows with SeriousGlass technology to make the window up to 4x more insulating, will save the Empire State Building $4 million dollars a year and will pay for itself in only 3 years.  Now that makes sense!

The Empire State Building today announced the completion of a building-wide window refurbishment. The initiative is one of eight measures implemented at the Landmark as part of an innovative energy retrofit project announced in April 2009 with President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The building's 6,514 windows were refurbished through a groundbreaking process that reused 96 percent of the existing glass and frames. The initiative alone will directly reduce building energy costs by more than $400,000 annually.

Onsite processing will transform existing dual-pane windows into super-insulating windows.

Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), the global industrial leader in providing energy efficient and sustainable products, services and solutions, has selected Serious Energy, nee Serious Materials, to super-insulate more than 6,500 windows for the Empire State Building’s energy efficiency retrofit project.