By Nancy A. Ruhling
Photograph by Roy Gumpel
Ever since the American Bicentennial in 1976, the Empire State Building has been spotlighting itself with a rainbow of ever-changing night lights. Now, after a landmark energy-efficient retrofit, the building is showing its true colors. No matter which hues illuminate its lofty tower, at its core the Art Deco icon is evergreen.
Its $20-million retrofit, part of a $500-million building restoration and renovation, qualifies the 1930s skyscraper for LEED Gold certification. The retrofit will reduce overall energy use by up to 38 percent and energy costs by $4.4 million annually, as well as reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 105,000 metric tons over the next 15 years.
“We did it because it makes us money, and it saves us money,” says Anthony E. Malkin of Empire State Building Co., the owner. “Green to us is one thing, and energy-efficiency is another. Green is qualitative—it’s things like recycling and using low-VOC paint, which we already do—and energy-efficiency is quantitative. What we’re doing is quantitative. We spent $20 million on the retrofit that was not in the $500-million budget, but some things that were not budgeted didn’t have to be done because of the retrofit, and those added up to $7 million, so that was $7 million we saved.”
The project—a collaboration between the Empire State Building Co., Clinton Climate Initiative, Rocky Mountain Institute, Johnson Controls Inc., and Jones Lang LaSalle—is being hailed as a model, not only for its energy-efficient solutions but also for the innovative process that led to the sustainable decisions.
“In this distressed economic climate, there is a tremendous opportunity for cities and building owners to retrofit existing buildings to save money and save energy,” former President Bill Clinton said in a statement. “I’m proud of the work my foundation’s climate initiative has done with 40 of the world’s largest cities, including New York, where we played a central role in convening a unique set of partners that are working to make the Empire State Building retrofit project possible. It is this kind of innovative collaboration that is crucial to protecting our planet and getting our economy up and running again.”
The project has put energy-efficiency solutions on the radar of building owners across the nation. “Nobody has ever done anything like this before,” Malkin says. “We were doing major upgrading, and we linked into the Clinton Climate Initiative a year into the project. Then the other members of the team came aboard.”
During the eight-month design phase, the team considered more than 60 ideas that could be done if cost were no object. That list was pared to eight key categories that had 17 implementable projects that balanced financial and environmental concerns to cut carbon output.
“There are no solar panels, wind turbines, or green roofs,” says Raymond Quartararo, international director of Jones Lang LaSalle, the project manager for the retrofit and renovation. “There’s nothing cutting-edge. These were all fundamental simple changes and upgrades. We did look at exotic items, but we didn’t do them because it didn’t make sense in a commercial building.”
The eight categories are:
Window light retrofit. The building’s 6,500 thermopane glass windows were refurbished. New components were added to the glass and sashes to create triple-glazed insulated panels that significantly reduce summer heat load and winter heat loss.
Radiator insulation retrofit. Insulation was added behind 7,000 radiators to reduce heat loss and better heat the building’s perimeter.
Tenant lighting, day lighting, and plug upgrades. Improved lighting designs, day lighting controls, and plug-load occupancy sensors were introduced in common areas and tenant spaces to reduce electricity costs and cooling loads.
Air handler replacements. Air handling units were replaced with frequency drive fans to improve energy efficiency and tenant comfort during operation.
Chiller plant retrofit. The chiller shells were reused, but the guts were replaced and variable-frequency drives were added to improve efficiency and controllability.
Whole-building control system upgrade. The system was upgraded to optimize HVAC operation and provide more sub-metering information.
Ventilation control upgrade. Demand-control ventilation was introduced in occupied spaces to improve air quality and reduce the energy required to condition the outside air.
Tenant energy-management systems. Individualized, web-based power-usage systems allow each tenant to manage power usage efficiently.
“Everything we did makes good business sense,” Quartararo says. “It’s about higher rental rates and lower operating costs. It wasn’t about saving the environment.”
Timing was the key to the success of the project. The building was getting set to undergo a major restoration and renovation in conjunction with a plan to reposition it as a trophy commercial real estate building for large tenants looking for spaces of 5,000 to 15,000 square feet. Previously, the building had attracted smaller tenants, and hundreds were leasing spaces of only 1,500 square feet.
“The best time to look at a retrofit is when you have a capital program in the planning,” Quartararo says. “We stopped the capital program and said, ‘Would we do this differently under sustainability?’ By doing them together, we saved time and money. Of the $500 million, $100 million was for infrastructure improvements that would have yielded no energy savings. When we overlaid the retrofit, a net increase of $13 million was added to the total program to achieve sustainability. With $4.4 million per year in energy savings, there’s a payback on the $13 million in only three years.”
The retrofit also saved money in one huge—and unanticipated—way. Because one-third of the building, including most of the public spaces, was not air conditioned, the original plan called for replacing the chiller plant at a cost of $18 million. Once the team looked at ways to increase the building’s efficiency envelope, it became clear that this didn’t need to be done to achieve the desired result.
“By refurbishing the 6,500 windows, which were only about 15 years old, and by adding insulation behind the 7,000 radiators, we increased the efficiency of the building envelope enough that we didn’t need to replace the chiller plant to get increased cooling capacity,” Quartararo says. “By looking at solutions for the whole building, we avoided the $18 million cost of replacing the chillers, and instead we are spending only $4 million to retrofit the chillers.”
The Empire State Building was particularly challenging to retrofit because it, like New York City, never sleeps. What’s more, it has three types of users—commercial tenants, tourists, and a broadcasting community of 44 radio and TV stations—that each have differing needs.
“We had to come up with three different designs for three different tenants,” says professional engineer Paul Rode, a project executive for Johnson Controls. “Because it’s virtually a 24/7 operation, it uses more resources and provides more potential for saving energy.”
For Steve Pressler, executive vice president and area general manager for Skanska USA Building, moving to the Empire State Building in November 2008 was a win-win decision. Skanska, one of the country’s top green builders, wanted to create a LEED Platinum office space for itself. With its retrofit and original light-filled design, the building earned Skanska instant LEED points.
“We were able to build our green office for nearly the same price as a regular Class A fit-out,” Pressler says. “Our budget for the build-out was 4.3 percent higher than we originally budgeted. But we are 46 percent to 49 percent more energy efficient in our electrical use. The energy savings will give us a payback in less than five years.”
Skanska employees love the space, which gives most of them window views and/or access to natural daylight, and allows them to individually control the heat and air conditioning at each workstation. “We’ve proven that being sustainable is an economic advantage—both for our office and for the Empire State Building,” Pressler says.
The design firm BBG-BBGM was one of the new, large-space tenants attracted to the Empire State Building’s sustainable renovation. The firm, which moved into the building in June 2008, rents the 25th floor, and has applied for Silver LEED certification for its office.
“It’s a tenet of our firm to be sustainable,” says Julia Monk, a managing partner, “and with our clients we need to be LEED leaders and lead by example.”
Monk says that this project has raised the bar on sustainability. “It brings a new definition of what expectations from a building are,” she says. “Malkin’s views jibed with ours, so it was a good fit.”
The Empire State Building project is designed to make tenants like Skanska and BBG-BBGM aware and accountable for energy consumption. Tenant energy-management software allows them to track energy use and compare it with that of other comparable tenants of the same size in identical professions. “It’s shown in a user-friendly form that they can understand,” Rode says. “They can print out the carbon footprint of their use and use it to promote their company.”
Energy-conscious tenants also benefit in another way. “We’ve done the homework for them,” says Caroline Fluhrer, a consultant with Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent reviewer for the project. “We can give them the guidelines on what they can do to save money on the space.”
Although the downturn in the economy has put green initiatives on the back burner, they still are uppermost on the minds of many tenants. “Ninety percent of tenants ask about sustainability, and many building owners express interest,” Quartararo says. “We are hoping that building owners can see that this can differentiate them and that it can bring an increase in rents and also save them money.”
Malkin was clear in his mandate for the retrofit: The Empire State Building was to be a laboratory that would provide “how-to” know how, and everything—models, tools, paybacks—was to be revealed and publicized so it could replicated. Although the Empire State Building was not the original property he considered, he opted to use it because of its high-profile status and marketability.
“We’re actively on the stump, and we’re inviting people to come in,” says Malkin, adding that the building systems work is set to be finished by the end of 2010 and the work in the tenant spaces will be done by 2013. “I personally have committed a year of my time from the April 2009 launch to create additional converts.”
Every building is different, and so is every green solution, but the Empire State Building project proves beyond a doubt that sustainability in existing buildings is doable and desirable. And that, all involved in the project agree, is its real legacy.
“We reinvented the process for doing green in existing buildings,” says Rode. “And it’s amazing that more people aren’t doing this, especially in Manhattan, where the record on retrofitting is dismal and where it would make so much sense because power is so expensive. Many Manhattan buildings have not been made energy efficient because they have been grandfathered in under old codes. And today financing isn’t available for commercial real estate. Right now, only projects that have internal funding can go forward, and there are only a few of these.”
One of the greater benefits of the retrofit is the one that can’t be added up by Malkin’s calculator. “The process was very important,” says Fluhrer. “We collaborated to create the retrofit. This hadn’t been done before, and each player brought a different perspective.”
The Empire State Building has gone a long way toward opening the retrofit door. The Rocky Mountain Institute has fielded nearly two dozen inquiries, and Jones Lang LaSalle has quite a few clients, including a library system in the Northeast and a health-care building in the Tri-state area, looking into it. Johnson Controls recently got the green light to retrofit Worldwide Plaza, the 1989 three-building complex designed by David Childs at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. “My green work is exploding,” Rode says. “I have a dozen more that have inquired because they know about the Empire State Building.”
As for the Empire State Building’s tower lights, they’re still the metal halides from the 1990s. Although they’re not as energy efficient as LEDs, replacing them wouldn’t have significantly decreased overall energy use. But they still burn brightly in every color, especially green.
