NYC Panel Suggests 100 Ways Buildings Can Be Greener
Feb 2, 2010 – Mireya Navarro reports in The New York Times that a panel of experts convened by the mayor and City Council issued more than 100 recommendations Monday on how to make New York City’s building codes more environmentally sound by imposing energy-saving requirements on construction and renovation work.
The measures, presented to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Council’s speaker, Christine C. Quinn, include rules for insulating glass skyscrapers and a plan that would place temperature controls in individual apartments, eliminating the winter ritual of opening windows to vent excess heat.
Many of the proposals would need to be approved by the City Council. “A lot of these are incremental gains, but together they amount to a big gain,” said the panel’s chairman, Russell Unger, the executive director of the New York chapter of the United States Green Building Council, which certifies green design and construction. “By changing code, everybody can have lower utility bills.”
The recommendations are the city’s latest attempt to reduce the greenhouse gases produced by its buildings, which are estimated to be the source of about 75 percent of the city’s emissions over all. In December, the City Council passed legislation requiring owners of New York’s largest buildings to pay for energy audits, upgrade lighting and take other steps to reduce energy consumption.
Read the full story in The New York Times.
