What's Happening from Environmental Building News
Green Codes Task Force:
111 Ways to Make NYC Greener
In July 2008, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called on the Urban Green Council (formerly the New York chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council) to convene a task force to advise the City on future changes to municipal codes that would shrink the city’s carbon footprint and improve public and environmental health. Some 18 months later, the New York City Green Codes Task Force, an assemblage of more than 200 leading thinkers in green building today (including BuildingGreen’s Alex Wilson), has released a report offering 111 recommendations to help bring the codes in line with PlaNYC, the City’s comprehensive plan to reduce energy and water use and bring greenhouse gas emissions down 30% by 2030.
New York City is already out front in the race among cities pushing to encourage green building, mandating LEED for public buildings since 2007 and requiring energy monitoring, audits, and retrocommissioning for large commercial buildings since late 2009 (see
EBN Jan. 2010). But, as Urban Green Council executive director and task force steering committee chair Russell Unger points out, these regulations push the leading edge while leaving most buildings, including some of the lowest performers, to continue business as usual. Taking on green building at a code level, he says, would begin to change all that. “The average New Yorker doesn’t get to experience much green unless they live or work in a high-end building,” Unger told
EBN. “When you change codes, it means that everyone can live in a green building; everyone can have healthier air and live in a space that’s consistent with their values.”
The 111 recommendations of the task force fall into ten categories, overseen by nine technical committees, a steering committee, and an industry advisory committee. All proposals include sample statutory language, an explanation of the background issues and rationale, analysis of costs and savings, precedents from other jurisdictions, comparison to LEED credits, and implementation information. Some of the recommendations are simply calls for further research, especially in relatively new areas like climate adaptation. Others would require significant changes to building codes and construction practices—particularly those that deal with HVAC upgrades, envelope issues, and district-level infrastructure alterations. Still others would remove existing impediments to energy-efficient passive design strategies, like allowing awnings, which currently may be no longer than 10 inches, seriously limiting their efficacy. Below is a sampling of proposals from each category:
Overarching Code Issues (OC): Recommendations in this category focus on ensuring that codes can expand to accommodate new sustainable building practices, that the relevant personnel are trained to comply, that existing buildings are not ignored, and that codes incorporate environmental protection as a fundamental principle.
Health & Toxicity (HT): VOCs, formaldehyde, dirty boiler fuels, soot from outside air, and mold in bathrooms are familiar targets here, but the committee also recommends encouraging stairway use, making drinking fountains more widely available, removing administrative barriers to asbestos remediation, and investigating a fluorescent bulb recycling program.
Energy & Carbon Emissions –
Fundamentals (EF): The first of three energy and carbon categories, this section aims to clarify codes and lower building energy loads. Recommended here are a uniform adoption of ASHRAE 90.1, requiring more insulation and air barriers, promoting natural ventilation through screens and operable windows, and removal of impediments to alternative energy and passive cooling strategies.
Energy & Carbon Emissions –
Energy Efficiency (EE): This section calls for improved energy modeling, more efficient energy and lighting systems, and required commissioning in all large buildings, but also low-cost measures like limiting after-hours retail lighting and reducing lighting power requirements in offices. Temperature controls in individual living spaces would also eliminate the familiar sight of windows wide open in midwinter to cool overheated apartments.
Energy & Carbon Emissions –
Operations & Maintenance (EO): Proposals in this section are aimed at raising awareness of energy use among building operations personnel and tenants alike. Examples include required metering, monitoring, and regular inspections; training for operations staff; and setting new required temperature minimums and maximums.
Building Resilience (BR): Resilience—climate adaptation—is a relatively new consideration on the code landscape and arguably a more urgent one for water-bound New York. These proposals address protection of infrastructure in the event of flooding, and call for more flood and climate research. Several resilience recommendations also address
passive survivability—ensuring that critical life-safety systems function without power and water.
Resource Conservation (RC): Construction waste is the primary target of this section, with additional recommendations for using recycled aggregate in concrete, recycled asphalt, and sustainable wood; dedicated tenant recycling areas would also be required here.
Water Efficiency (WE): Upgraded water fixtures and required submetering would curtail water consumption, while other proposals call for reducing potable water used for cleaning sidewalks and cooling energy systems and appliances, and clearing the administrative hurdles to water recycling and reuse.
Stormwater (SW): With combined sewer overflows a common occurrence in New York due to the high proportion of paved area, these recommendations would institute stricter runoff requirements for lots and construction sites, allow for innovative site-based stormwater strategies, and require that half of non-built portions of lots remain unpaved.
Urban Ecology (UE): Requiring native plants on city property, prohibiting turf grass, encouraging permeable sidewalks, and protecting mature trees are some proposals aimed at improving urban biodiversity and combating stormwater runoff and the urban heat-island effect.
With the recommendations now in the hands of the mayor’s office and the City Council, Unger said that the Urban Green Council would continue discussions with City officials and stakeholders about how the task force proposals might be implemented. Expressing cautious optimism about the future of the report, Unger focused on the capacity of code-level changes to move markets and make green building strategies more affordable, and thus much more accessible. “When you’re writing codes, you need to make sure that you’re mandating something that every building can achieve,” he said. “But when you move codes in the direction of sustainability, all of a sudden these are standard products and standard services.”
– Andrea Ward
For more information:
Urban Green Council
www.urbangreencouncil.org/advocacy/green-codes-task-force.html
March 1, 2010
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Photo: Alex Wilson
