GREEN IDEAS

The grades are in.

They're not posted, they are not public and you might have to do some digging to find yours.

But if your New York City building is over 50,000 square feet, it was energy-benchmarked by the city and it has now been scored.

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Ann Gordon moved into a 122-unit co-op in the Van Cortlandt Village section of The Bronx in 1986, when her career as a maker of large public sculptures was at its peak. She suspended a gigantic green boot above a Broadway marquee and installed 30-foot-long ballet slippers on the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Although she had no way of knowing it at the time, those art projects gave her a set of skills that would come into play, years later, in the co-op.

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With co-op boards and condo associations constantly on the lookout for money savings and energy conservation — which often amount to the same thing — many boards are wondering if they should install a relatively new technology known as "tankless" water heaters. What are they, and do they really provide energy savings?

Tankless water heaters work by heating water with either a gas burner or an electric element, and delivering water as a constant supply. Heat loss is effectively avoided because of the instantaneous nature of the system. But here comes problem No. 1: The flow rate of hot water can decrease as demand increases.

Indeed, tankless water heaters — which are being marketed to smaller co-ops and condos in addition to their primary user, owners of single-family homes — seem at first glance to be a big plus: They are, on average, 24 to 34 percent more efficient than traditional heaters. They require less energy and last twice as long as their more conventional counterparts. They can also run on electricity, gas, propane, or solar power.

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In 2008, a worker at the Americana co-op in Queens discovered oil in a basement tunnel. Heating oil was leaking from the property's 25,000-gallon underground storage tank, seeping into the soil and threatening to spill into neighboring Little Neck Bay. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) began digging trenches into the courtyard and tearing up the concrete parking lot to see how far the oil had spread.

Cleaning up the mess cost the co-op a whopping $400,000 —  but if the oil had contaminated the bay, the fines would have been crippling. The crisis prompted the board to move away from heating oil and replace the two lumbering, outmoded and inefficient boilers installed when the co-op — a 16-story tower and a block of townhouses — was built in 1968.

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Looking to lower the cost of electricity? Create your own! You've heard of co-ops, condos and other types of buildings and communities doing it via technologies like solar or wind power. But there's a lesser-known alternative: Cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power (CHP). It's a natural-gas-fueled method of generating electricity for the building and creating heat that can be used to power the air-conditioning system, heat the domestic water, and heat the building in winter.

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If your condo or co-op board is in a fog about FOG, then read on —  and save yourself some headaches down the road.

FOG is the acronym used by the city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for describing the ingredients that are part of a common problem: fats, oil and grease. The difficulty arises when cooks deposit any (or all) of those in their kitchen drains: With more than 22,000 food service establishments serving over eight million New Yorkers, food remnants invariably get flushed into the sewers. Both restaurants and households discharge wastewater containing fats, oil, and grease into more than 7,400 miles of New York City public sewers.

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With warmer winters and hotter summers – with the climate changing dramatically every day – what is the first defense against the elements? The short answer: innovative sustainability practices. Indeed, some of the most commonly considered options in the new weather patterns New Yorkers will be facing are green roofs, blue roofs, and white roofs.

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The River Arts cooperative in Manhattan's Washington Heights has saved $15,000 a year in electricity costs since installing rooftop solar panels two years ago — an installation  partly funded by government incentives. River Arts financed the $418,000 project with a federal tax credit, a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and a city property tax abatement. In all, the credits and grants reduced their final bill to $34,560. Initially, the board estimated it would take eight to ten years to pay back the investment. Instead, it took only three.

Nevertheless, River Arts' costs have gone up by 15 percent because of rising property taxes and skyrocketing fuel costs. Property taxes cost the complex $1 million in 2012, up from $300,000 in 2005. In 2015, when the city phases out No. 6 oil, the co-op will have to use a cleaner, but costlier, fuel.

The co-op has taken many steps to lower costs. When it replaced the lighting in the communal areas with energy-efficient fixtures, it took advantage of a $15,000 NYSERDA grant that brought the price down from $51,000 to $36,000. It took the co-op two years to pay.

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Installing solar panels on the roof of your co-op or condo isn't the easiest thing to do. The New York City permitting process can be cumbersome, and not all buildings are good candidates. A property must have a large roof in good condition and, above all, gets ample sun: A building with too much shade will not get enough sunlight to generate energy.

Then there are the financials. If a building is structured as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, it won't benefit from some of the tax incentives. And since most of the financial incentives come in the form of a rebate, a building's owners need to either have enough cash to pay for the project up front or be able to qualify for a loan.

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Traditionally, a lack of reliable data documenting savings from efficiency improvements hampered efforts to convince owners, managers, and residents that such an investment makes financial sense. Even no, in Habitat's 30th year, a lack of reliable data is still impeding these efforts.

Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, in conjunction with Living Cities, recently issued a report (Recognizing the Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Multifamily Underwriting) that analyzed documented energy savings in over 230 properties. Surprisingly, this study is the first of its kind and represents the largest database of before-and-after energy consumption in apartment buildings, all of which are rentals and virtually all of which are affordable housing.

The study lays the foundation for continuing analysis of energy improvements. The data confirm that energy savings are achievable but also reveal some anomalies that may make financing based on projected savings unlikely, at least until more information is accumulated and analyzed.

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