Empire State could become America's greenest

The Empire State Building - soon to be one of the greenest buildings in the US. File photo by Getty.

RELATED ARTICLES: Top 10 construction world record holders | The 10 greatest engineering feats of the decade | The Arab world's greatest construction projects

New York's tallest building is set to undergo a US$20 million green refit that will cut energy use by 40%.

The company that bought the 443 metre Empire State building in 2006, Malkin Holdings, have revealed plans to overhaul the iconic building, which is tallest building in America since the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers in 2001.

Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, told the Guardian newspaper that the US$550m renovation was an attempt to restore the Empire State to its former glory. In recent years the building had fallen into disrepair, occupied largely by small companies paying low rents.

"When we took control of it, the place needed to be fixed. It was broken," he said.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Empire state building has shown a way , how to cut electricity. Monuments of India has a lot of possibilities. Also to u   2 Comments Read more comments »

But part of the renovation is a drive to make the country's tallest building one of its greenest. US$20 million of the makeover is expected to cut the building's energy use by almost 40%, reducing bills by more than $4m and paying back the cost of the refit in three years.

"We're doing this not because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes business sense. If we don't reduce our energy consumption, we will lose money and be less competitive against China, India, Brazil and the other expanding economies," Malkin said.

The refit ranges from simple to high-tech. First, contractors will strip out every one of the building's 6,500 windows and renovate them with an insulating film and a mixture of inert gases to make them four times as effective at retaining heat or coolness.

A huge wireless network has been set up to enable valves and vents to be centrally controlled. Four central chillers have been replaced and smart air circulation systems have also been put in as a low-energy means of heating the building in winter and cooling it in summer.

But Paul Rode of Johnson Controls, an energy management company that is leading the project, said the greatest energy savings have involved persuading the 300 tenants to use their spaces more effectively. As the occupants of the second largest office complex in America, after the Pentagon, much of the onus for change falls on them.

Each company renting space in the Empire State now has access to a website that records minute by minute how much they are spending on energy and compares it with other tenants in the building as well as to competitors in their industries externally.

Having revealed to the tenants their own consumption, the website then advises them what they can do to cut their bills by making basic changes, such as moving desks towards the centre of the building to release daylight into the space, switching lights off at night, or cutting back on air conditioning.

"We're showing what's possible without even installing a single solar panel, or a wind turbine or a geothermal unit, and you don't need additional grid capacity or any new power plants," Malkin said.

"This is low-hanging fruit that can be plucked easily and we should be getting on with it as quickly as possible."

The refit of the building will cut its carbon footprint by more than 100,000 metric tonnes over the next 15 years, which is the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road.

If that record were replicated by just a fifth of the largest buildings in America, it would save 2.3 billion metric tonnes of carbon emissions, the equivalent to the amount of green house gas pollution produced by the whole of Russia each year.