New York Governor Kathy Hochul has just announced the addition of six new strategic partners to the $50 million Empire Building Challenge in aims of enhancing the state’s stock of energy-efficient buildings.
The newly-added partners will be tasked with developing "highly repeatable" solutions to reducing carbon emissions in the heating and hot water systems of roughly 5.6 million square feet of high-rise buildings statewide that are included in the Challenge.
Brookfield Properties and Tishman Speyer lead the groups included in the program’s expansion, which now covers some 125 million square feet of commercial and multifamily properties and over 1,500 units of housing. The new interests selected by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) include:
"The new Empire Building Challenge partners are a clear indication New York's real estate industry is stepping up to find high-quality, low-carbon solutions for high-rise buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris said in a statement. "The diversity of high-rise existing buildings chosen, ranging from an affordable housing cooperative in the Bronx to a 59-story commercial office building in Manhattan, underscores the wide-breadth of building stock that we need to address to make building electrification a reality for more New Yorkers."
The Governor’s office shared that each team will incorporate a variety of strategies including heat recovery, thermal storage, advanced heat pumps, low-temperature hydronics, and advanced system integrations in order to reach their goals.
Each team will be eligible for $100,000 worth of decarbonization planning reimbursements and up to $3,000,000 in support of their retrofit demonstration projects through a "competitive solicitation" that is expected later this year. A group called The Clean Fight will serve as the program's administrator. In a press release, Hochul said: "I congratulate our new Empire Building Challenge partners and know their vision and dedication to decarbonizing our buildings will get us even closer to achieving two million climate-friendly homes by 2030."
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The Empire Building Challenge is one of the most remarkable decarbonization programs in the US. Here is a great primer on what can be accomplished with this kind of thinking:
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