{"id":1031,"date":"2010-06-07T00:55:36","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T04:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2010-06-07T00:58:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T04:58:09","slug":"the-whole-building-approach-to-the-worlds-tallest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1031","title":{"rendered":"The Whole-Building Approach for the World’s Tallest"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Caroline Fluhrer & Rebecca Cole, RMI SOLUTIONS<\/em> JOURNAL, Spring 2010<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> How will we pay for it?<\/p>\n

What retrofit projects should be implemented?<\/p>\n

Who should do the work?<\/p>\n

These are the key questions most building owners ask when embarking on a retrofit project. Yet many overlook what may make or break its success: timing.<\/p>\n

In most cases, building owners consider a large capital investment generally for reliability, comfort or functionality\u2014not to save energy. In doing so, they are overlooking the prime time to do an energy efficiency retrofit.<\/p>\n

Energy efficiency measures are almost universally less cost-effective when done as stand-alone projects. However, when the principles of \u201cintegrated design\u201d and \u201cpiggybacking\u201d are applied to major capital investments in a building, energy efficiency measures can become highly profitable.<\/p>\n

Integrated Design and the Empire State Building<\/h3>\n

A year after RMI and our partners completed an award-winning retrofit design<\/strong><\/a> of the Empire State Building<\/strong><\/a>, the $550 million capital upgrade program is now underway.<\/p>\n

Overall, the complete energy efficiency program will generate $4.4 million in annual energy cost savings, and cut the building\u2019s energy use by nearly 40 percent, all with an incremental payback of just over three years.<\/p>\n

A major portion of the project is to retrofit every one of the building\u2019s approximately 6,500 double-hung windows in order to quadruple their energy performance. Only 10 years old, the windows will be removed, converted into \u201csuper insulating glass units<\/strong><\/a>\u201d in a special on-site assembly area on a vacant floor of the building, and re-hung.<\/p>\n

This project will generate $410,000 a year in energy savings at a total capital cost of $4.5 million and an incremental capital cost of $4 million (since $500,000 was already budgeted for window sealing and isolated replacements). This stand-alone project <\/strong><\/a>has a simple payback of just less than 10 years.<\/p>\n

However, to characterize the economics of this particular window retrofit project as having a \u201c9.8-year payback\u201d is overly conservative.<\/p>\n

Because the window retrofit roughly halves solar heat gain, it reduces the building\u2019s peak cooling load by 440 tons. The team was thus able to recommend the renovation and reduction of the existing chiller plant, at a capital cost of $5.1 million, rather than replacing and expanding it for $22.4 million. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article in the Rocky Mountain Institute’s journal really spells out how the best green building approach — the one that also yields the greatest cost savings — is the integrated one, where all a building’s systems are taken into account before the retrofit starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[332,17],"tags":[485,484,173,164,488,486,487],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}