Retrofitting the Empire State Building provides profit lessons for going green in Australia

Retrofitting the Empire State Building provides profit lessons for going green in Australia
Larry SchlesingerDecember 8, 2020

It took Johnson Controls a year to remove, retrofit and replace each of the Empire State Building’s 6,514 double-hung, dual-pane windows – 26,056 panes of glass in total. It was all part of a three-year project that has made the 1930s-era skyscraper – arguably the most famous in the world – among the most energy efficient buildings in the world as well.

The revamp also cut the 102-storey building’s energy bill by around US$2.5 million a year, meaning the US$13 million retrofit will pay itself off in only three years.

But it was a major challenge, given the building’s age and heritage status for Johnson Controls, a huge US-multinational specialising in retrofiting commercial buildings.

Johnson Controls has a long history in Australia and has also been responsible for retrofitting major building spaces in Australia, including the Gateway Plaza and Tower overlooking the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

Other Australian projects include retrofitting of 83,000 square metres of property owned by the Victorian Department of Treasury & Finance to reduce energy use by 33%, water use by 8% and greenhouse gas emissions by 9,400 tons annually.

But the Manhattan landmark was arguable the company's greatest green challenge.

“The Empire State Building is a historical landmark so you can’t change the look,” Clay Nesler, vice president of global energy and sustainability for Johnson Controls, tells Property Observer.

This meant Johnson Controls had to use the existing unpainted red window frames, dating back to the Empire State's construction in 1931.

The windows were never meant to be red, but because the building was constructed at the height of The Great Depression they were never painted (to save costs) and the original primer colour remains today as a distinctive part of the look of the skyscraper.

To better insulate the building, contractors had to insert an extra spacer into each window and fill this with an inert gas.

“Every day 75 windows came down and 75 new ones went up – it took us a year just to the do the windows,” Nesler says

The process paid off, with the insulation provided by the new window design removing the need to undertake a costly retrofit of the 1931 air-conditioning “chiller” plant in the building.

Replacing the windows was one of eight energy-efficiency improvement measures implemented by Johnson Controls in a project that kicked off in 2008.

Johnson Controls also implemented a new tenant energy management system, which allows every tenant in the building to monitor (via an online system) the amount of energy they are using over any period of time and compare their energy use to other tenants.

“So accounting firms can compare themselves with other accounting firms in the building,” says Neslor.

The success of the Empire State Building project comes as Johnson Controls releases the results of its latest Efficiency Indicator (EEI) survey showing that plans for green building certification in Australia grew about 50% last year.

According to the 253 Australian facility managers, building executives and owners surveyed, more than a quarter (27%) plan to pursue green certification on new construction projects and 41% plan to certify existing buildings.

 


 

Nesler says the results show that energy management is growing in importance for Australian building executives with 79% describing energy management as very or extremely important to their organisations, up from 63% in 2011.

Click to enlarge

Source: Johnson Controls

It also found that just over half (52%) of Australian respondents have invested in energy efficiency in the past year, and 35% have invested in renewable energy – both below the global averages (63% and 36% respectively).

Another interesting local result was that Australia, alongside the UK, was the only market in which respondents cited asset value as a top-three motivator for efficiency behind energy cost savings and government and utility incentives or rebates.

According to the survey, Australia’s top three energy efficiency measures adopted in the past 12 months included: lighting improvements (67%), water efficiency improvements (57%), and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) improvements (50%).

Larry Schlesinger

Larry Schlesinger was a property writer at Property Observer

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