Is New York's Greenest Building Really Green?

[hrmjustin]

By Kevin Brass

An article in the New Republic is refocusing attention on one of the dirty little secrets of the mania to build tall buildings.

The Bank of America Tower in New York building, once touted as New York's greenest building, is "actually its biggest energy hog," New Republic author Sam Roudman wrote. The 55-story tower, completed in 2010, was equipped with waterless urinals, daylight dimming controls, rainwater harvesting systems and an array of other green technologies, earning it the first-ever LEED platinum rating for a skyscraper. Even Al Gore praised it.

But once it opened, the building's performance was much different than the hype. In reality, the building consumes twice as much energy per square foot as the retrofitted Empire State Building, according to a city study. Even compared to projects with much lower LEEDs ratings, the building billed as "the most sustainable in the country" is a huge energy guzzler.

This won't be a big surprise to anyone in the building world. Despite all the rhetoric about sustainability and technological advances, skyscrapers are rarely very green, even those buildings relentlessly promoted as green.

For the environmental community, this debate is not idle chit-chat. Buildings are the world's biggest energy consumers and they emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases, with flashy skyscrapers among the biggest abusers.

Read more at http://www.worldpropertychannel.com/featured-columnists/global-property-beat/skyscrapers-green-building-bank-of-america-tower-new-york-architecture-leed-building-design-7176.php

[ceonupe]

1. You might note

That building contains 2 very large known data centers and one "unofficial" data center that is beloved to be used by the government.

[MADem]

2. The tenants are pigs....energy hogs!!!!!

The Bank of America experience shows how easy it is to undermine good intentions. There really is no mystery behind the building's energy usage. A third of the leasable space is filled by huge financial trading floors, packed with electricity-guzzling computers and monitors, not to mention the servers and the systems needed to cool the space and equipment.

No building, no matter how well designed, could be considered energy efficient with those kinds of tenants. The Bank of America building may have been designed to set new standards for environmental skyscrapers; instead it simply illustrates that a building is only as green and sustainable as the people in it. - See more at: http://www.worldpropertychannel.com/featured-columnists/global-property-beat/skyscrapers-green-building-bank-of-america-tower-new-york-architecture-leed-building-design-7176.php#sthash.m2ta4s0B.dpuf