City Council Seeks to Jump-Start Greening of Buildings

New York City’s biggest polluters are its buildings. So city councilman Costa Constantinides, a Queens Democrat, has pledged his support for enacting an enforceable mandate as part of the city's broader goal of trimming carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, Crain’s reports. "I consider today a milestone in our quest to make New York City's buildings greener, our infrastructure more sustainable, and our air significantly cleaner," Constantinides said in a statement earlier this week after introducing his legislation, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions in large buildings by 20 percent between 2020 and 2030. 

Constantinides' legislation proposes mandating energy reduction through a multi-step process in buildings topping 25,000 square feet. First, these structures would be scored on a yet-to-be-designed metric that would assess how efficient they already are. Greener buildings would need to do less – or may even be exempt from the rules – while wasteful buildings would need to do more. As a group, the buildings would need to post a 20 percent overall reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. 

Constantinides' announcement follows an environmental report released last week by the Urban Green Council, which held months of meetings hashing out a rough path to concrete legislation that would be acceptable to a diverse group of stakeholders, including large real estate owners and tenant advocacy groups.

Should the resulting legislation mirror the report, new rules would apply to 50,000 buildings, with the share of residential structures, including large co-ops and condos, dwarfing those in the commercial, institutional or other property sectors. Buildings in the five boroughs account for more than two-thirds of the city’s total emissions, which is why reform in the real estate sector is essential to fulfilling the city’s 80X50 plan. 

The Urban Green Council report cautioned that while the city has made progress on the path to 80x50 by such measures as mandating cleaner heating oil, future reforms could be much costlier and more politically contentious.