Published July 14, 2021
Hosted by Urban Green Council CEO John Mandyck, Urban Green Live features conversations with international industry experts to answer your questions about a low carbon future.
On July 14, 2021, we welcomed Ben Furnas, Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. During this episode, Ben and John discuss New York City’s policy direction for carbon reduction in buildings and the very latest about NYC’s plans to lower emissions.
Key Takeaways
Local Law 97, part of the Climate Mobilization Act, is one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation on building emissions globally.
-> The law’s implementation is underway, with the NYC Department of Buildings and the Local Law 97 advisory board working to ensure building owners understand compliance requirements.
-> Programs like the NYC Accelerator and the PACE program are providing technical assistance and financing to help building owners make necessary retrofits.
A key challenge under Local Law 97 is managing building density and specific economic uses.
-> The advisory board is working to create more granular and focused use categories to set appropriate targets for different building types, such as data centers and supermarkets.
-> This approach aims to balance high-density living’s inherent sustainability benefits with the need to reduce emissions.
Speakers
John Mandyck
Chief Executive Officer
Ben Furnas
Director NYC Mayor's Office of Climate and Sustainability
Q&A
John Mandyck: How do we create a sense of urgency that we need to act?
Ben Furnas: I get this question a lot and I think there’s a real imperative. We think about what is really necessary to achieve deep decarbonization. We think about all of the incredible co-benefits that can come from achieving deep decarbonization, whether it’s air quality, tenant comfort, or just the high quality ways in which we can be living and working.
I think under any circumstance, whether it’s through Local Law 97 or just because of the ways in which humanity is racing towards decarbonization, these changes are going to have to be made. I talk a lot about the benefits of this, but on some basic level, I wish that climate change were not happening. I wish that we did not have to worry about this, but the realities of it are looming quite large. I think we need to be clear-eyed about the challenge that we face and clear-eyed about the necessity for all of us to come together to take action and transform.
John Mandyck: Do you see any changes with the new mayor in 2022?
Ben Furnas: Something that I feel very heartened by is that the entire field of Democratic candidates, including Borough President Adams, has articulated a real desire for New York to continue to be a leader in climate change. I’m really heartened to see everybody’s enthusiasm on this issue. We’re going to be working with the team that’s coming into place to make sure that they understand the landscape and will continue to take really ambitious climate action.
John Mandyck: How do we overcome the large difference in price between gas and electricity?
Ben Furnas: I think there’s going to be an enormous amount of innovation and transformation on the electricity side in order to provide the highest quality, lowest cost electricity possible. In a lot of ways, Local Law 97 creates an incentive structure that really encourages folks to be shifting away to lower carbon sources of energy for their heating and cooling.
John Mandyck: Will the Department of Buildings officials be flexible in allowing new technologies and system approaches for retrofits?
Ben Furnas: A lot of the solutions that are going to be crucial for achieving carbon neutrality are things that are going to be developed and deployed over the years to come. That being said, I think the Department of Buildings is ready to be flexible and open minded on different ways that folks can be meeting these really ambitious targets. I think they really aspire to be thoughtful and flexible and work with industry in order to adopt new practices to achieve these goals. It’s certainly something that our office is looking to support them in any way we can.
John Mandyck: How do we balance the need to decarbonize multifamily buildings with the need to make basic health and safety upgrades in affordable housing?
Ben Furnas: The very unsatisfying answer is we desperately need to do both of those things. The types of changes that are needed in order to decarbonize are the types of things that could improve the interior comfort, the health of the building, and the reliability of the building systems. I think we need to be doing both of these things at the same time.
Obviously, people deserve high quality places to live; we need to be working diligently in partnership with affordable housing agencies and with landlords all across the city to make sure that people are living in high quality habitable spaces that are as healthy as possible and working towards decarbonization.
John Mandyck: What is the potential for site renewable energy in New York City?
Ben Furnas: I think we need to be embracing every tool we can. If there’s high quality opportunities to be generating clean and renewable power in the five boroughs, it’s something we should be taking a look at. The challenges are so daunting that we really can’t afford to be picky about techniques or methods. We need to be embracing it all.
John Mandyck: What offers can be made to building owners in financial hardships to help with these transitions?
Ben Furnas: We were very heartened to see state level funding to support some changes in buildings. We think there’s going to be incentives at the state and utility level, perhaps at the federal level as well, coming out of a reconciliation or an infrastructure package. I think partnering with other levels of government to get resources to buildings who are seeking to make these changes is a big part of the work ahead.
John Mandyck: How is the city thinking about resiliency?
Ben Furnas: We work closely with the Office of Climate Resiliency as they think not only about preparing New York City for coastal storms and the changes to our shoreline, but really thinking about how the city will adapt to much hotter temperatures.I think it’s got to be a multi-pronged approach. It’s thinking about sea level rise and the way our coastlines will be changing. It’s thinking about coastal protection projects. It’s thinking about ways in which we can be making sure that people have access to cooler interior spaces so they don’t overheat.
On some fundamental level, it’s also really thinking about social resilience. It sounds a little bit cheesy, but genuinely friendships and neighbors are some of the most important resiliency tools we have to make sure we’re looking out for each other and coming together in challenging times.
John Mandyck: Do you see cooling as an essential service going forward? How does this balance and work into decarbonization plants?
Ben Furnas: As the climate gets hotter, people are going to need cool interior spaces. We’re going to need to figure out a way to make sure that people have access to cool interior spaces, and that their health and safety is protected. Obviously, it will require some amounts of different energy load at slightly different peak periods. That’s just something we’re going to have to incorporate into our future planning.
When thinking about cooling, that feels like the wrong place we should be looking for emissions reductions. On the other hand, we need to be making sure that those cooling technologies can be provided in the highest quality and most efficient way. As the world gets hotter, it’s gonna be even more imperative for folks to have access to cooling so they can stay healthy and thrive in a warming world.
John Mandyck: Does the city have a plan for workforce development to make sure we have enough trained people available to do the work that needs to get done?
Ben Furnas: There’s some terrific thinking that’s happening in partnership with the Department of Small Business Services, which has workforce training programs with EDC. Our partners at the Building Energy Exchange think a lot about the sort of professional level skill development that’s going to be needed.
As the demand ramps up, we’re going to be in partnership with labor and the craft unions to think about all of these pieces. We really want to make sure that as we do all of this work that folks are able to be partners in achieving the deep carbon emission reductions and high quality workforce training.
John Mandyck: Have you thought about electric vehicles? Are there concerns that we should be thinking about, or longer term plans to accommodate them?
Ben Furnas: In the five boroughs, an enormous number of us get around on the subway. Saving our subway and making sure that it’s a high quality engine of growth going forward is a key way that New York City is going to be extending the electrification of transportation.
On the vehicle side, I think you’re right that the future of cars and trucks is electric. A majority of chargers are likely going to end up in driveways where a is parked overnight, and can charge overnight. There’s slightly more challenging dynamics around folks who park on the street. Just this past month we launched our first curbside level two charging pilot with Con Edison. We think there’s a lot of interesting possibilities there.
John Mandyck: A lot of people are skeptical that renewable power is ever going to come. What are the building blocks for a green grid in New York City, and when do you see them rolling out?
Ben Furnas: We are working in really close partnership with the state on a lot of these questions. There’s going to be a major need for us to be bringing in clean and renewable electricity from outside the five boroughs. And there’s going to be an enormous need for us to be generating as much as we can on rooftops in the five boroughs. There’s an enormous amount of opportunity on the coasts or off our coasts in the form offshore wind.
The state has set really aggressive targets for 2030, and the federal government has set really aggressive targets, so we’re going to be working with all of these partners to achieve as much as we can as quickly as we can.
Local Law 97
NYC’s groundbreaking climate legislation sets carbon emissions caps for large buildings starting in 2024.
Advancing electrification
In 2019, we convened a 40-member advisory committee of industry leaders to help shape our Going Electric report, which identified nine crucial steps to jumpstart electrification in NYC’s large multifamily buildings.
Electrification and the grid in NYC’s EJ Areas
How will increased power demand from building electrification impact the grid in NYC’s environmental justice communities?