CBCA City Case Study | NYC Carbon Challenge and the value of partnership
CBCA City Case Study | NYC Carbon Challenge and the value of partnershipNew York City joined the City-Business Climate Alliance (CBCA) in 2019. CBCA has supported the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice to work with the business community to further advance the city’s climate action plan. With a target of carbon neutrality by 2050, the city cannot succeed without collaboration across the private, institutional and non-profit sectors.
The NYC Carbon Challenge is at the heart of this partnership model. The Carbon Challenge is a voluntary leadership initiative and public-private partnership between the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice and leaders in the real estate community who have committed to decarbonising their properties by 30% or more within ten years (1). Participating organisations aim to implement sustainability projects including on-site energy generation and energy efficiency measures in buildings.
The Mayor’s Office provides support, resources and recognition. New York City joined CBCA with the aim of accelerating the action delivered through the Carbon Challenge by sharing and receiving best practice knowledge and experience from other cities across the globe.
The Participants
Since 2007, the NYC Carbon Challenge has partnered with over 125 organisations occupying over 5,600 buildings. The partners represent 510 million square feet, roughly the equivalent of 9% of the city’s square footage. Starting with colleges and universities in 2007, it later added hospitals (2009), commercial and multifamily buildings (2013), hotels (2015) and retail (2018) (2, 3). In 2018, 21 participants met the 30% reduction goal, and 19 universities, hospitals and commercial offices have expanded their commitment to a reduction of 50% or greater by 2025. During Climate Week 2021, 13 leading participants went even further, committing to carbon neutrality in at least one property in their NYC portfolios by 2030. Partners include, among others: Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Empire State Realty Trust Inc, Google, InterContinental New York Barclay, JB&B, Lowes Regency Hotel, Marion Scott Real Estate Inc, RiseBoro Community Partnership, StuyTown Property Services, The Westin New York at Times Square and Yeshiva University (4).
Actions Implemented
Projects implemented by NYC Carbon Challenge participants include lighting upgrades, retro commissioning and optimisation of building equipment, installation of building controls, major heating and cooling equipment upgrades, installation of solar photovoltaics (PV) and other renewable energy sources, improved operations and maintenance, procurement of energy efficient appliances, enhanced building insulation and public education campaigns driving behavioral change (3).
As an example, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village (StuyTown), an 11,000-apartment residential development in Manhattan, underwent a major retrofit program during the 2010s. By rolling out a substantial heating-system upgrade to address the issue of imbalance and lack of heating control, the buildings went from residents opening windows during winter, resulting in heat escaping unchecked, to effectively and efficiently modulating their heat with their windows closed on cold days. These upgrades have resulted in a 15% reduction in GHG emissions in 2022 compared to a 2007 baseline. It is now one of the city’s greenest residential developments (5, 6).
The Numbers
Improving energy efficiency in existing buildings is critical, as 90% of New York’s buildings that exist today will still be standing in 2050 (7). Collectively, participants’ absolute emissions at the start of the program in 2007 were 5.39 million tCO2e, compared to city-wide emissions of 64.7 million tCO2e. In 2022, participants’ absolute emissions were 4.63 million tCO2e, a reduction of 760,000 tCO2e. Between 2007 and 2020, city-wide greenhouse gas emissions for commercial and institutional buildings in NYC fell by 23% (8).
In 2018, participants were projected to reduce citywide emissions by nearly 1,500,000 metric tons CO2e by the end of the program in 2030, the equivalent of taking more than 300,000 cars off the roads and resulting in an estimated US$700 million in energy cost savings. The program is steadily working towards this goal with 600,000 metric tons of carbon being cut in 2018 and the most recent data, for 2020, confirming reduction is closer to 725,000 tCO 2 E. To achieve these reductions, NYC Carbon Challenge participants had spent an estimated US$1.3 billion on energy efficiency and capital upgrades to their buildings by 2017, creating an estimated 1,600 local construction-related jobs and improving local air quality by reducing air particulate matter (PM2.5) by 58 metric tons, and thus avoiding 2,300 hospitalisations (3).
The Activities
Peer-to-peer learning is integral to the NYC Carbon Challenge. Through the CBCA initiative, the team that delivers the NYC Carbon Challenge has engaged in five peer exchange sessions on city-business collaboration, providing learnings from other global cities including Boston (USA) and Manchester (UK), to integrate back into their programme. In October 2022, CBCA supported the city to facilitate a workshop with NYC Carbon Challenge members to share experiences and identify future actions.
Yeshiva University, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Empire State Realty Trust, Marion Scott Real Estate, Beam Living, New York Intercontinental Barclays and RXR Realty participated and shared examples including the NYSERDA Empire Building Challenge and StuyTown. The workshop also identified the challenges stakeholders face in implementing carbon neutral designs and operations to inform future actions.
The Learnings
Through the NYC Carbon Challenge, the City of New York has established itself as a leader in city-business collaboration, subsequently delivering impactful emissions reduction measures in the built environment. Through participation in CBCA, the city increased the impact of its Carbon Challenge by identifying new potential members, engaging more effectively with existing members through workshops, sharing best practices and comparing challenges with other cities globally and collaborating with other city agencies to accelerate action. Key lessons learned to support businesses to decarbonise buildings include:
● The need for awareness regarding obstacles faced by business stakeholders. The biggest obstacles to implementing carbon neutral design and operations in NYC are the current risk averse real estate practices, uncertainty around future grid decarbonisation and the availability of low-cost fossil fuels
● The need for availability of high-standard guidelines and criteria. Popular criteria considered by the partner organisations in planning their decarbonisation plan were analysis and results from the Division of Environmental Remediation Audits, building energy assessment tools, benchmarking reports, existing case studies and financial models that included discounted cash flow analyses
● The need for clarity on best practices and most workable technology. The most used high-impact solution to achieving carbon neutrality were heat pumps and heat recovery systems. Other technology suggestions for improving NYC’s built environment included energy storage, carbon capture, wind turbines and weatherisation techniques.