{"id":1973,"date":"2011-07-24T11:04:10","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T15:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1973"},"modified":"2011-07-24T12:22:46","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T16:22:46","slug":"1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1973","title":{"rendered":"Still Fossil-Fueled, but Cleaner, Greener, Nonetheless"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Vivian S. Toy, NEW YORK TIMES, July 22, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> As board president of the Brevoort, a 1955 co-op tower in Greenwich Village, Ms. Nardone started her campaign to turn the building green about three years ago.<\/p>\n

Since then, the building has spent nearly $6 million. The projects ranged from the prosaic, like new windows and light bulbs, to the ambitious, like green roofs, converting from heating oil to natural gas<\/a>, and installing a $3.2 million cogeneration plant capable of powering the 20-story building in a citywide blackout.<\/p>\n

The extent of the work and the amount spent in such a short time are unusual. But board members say the building is now a model of energy efficiency and proudly note that other co-op boards have come to see what it has done.<\/p>\n

The Brevoort\u2019s timing was good.<\/p>\n

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced new heating oil regulations for thousands of buildings across the city. Now those buildings \u2014 most of them apartment houses \u2014 are reviewing their heating systems.<\/p>\n

The new rules require that by 2015, about 10,000 buildings switch from No. 6 heating oil, the cheapest but also the dirtiest fuel available, to No. 4 heating oil. Some buildings need to make the change as early as next July. But since buildings will be required to use either No. 2 oil<\/a> or natural gas by 2030, many building owners are contemplating making the larger change now to avoid two separate conversions. Natural gas currently costs about 30 percent less than fuel oil.<\/p>\n

City officials say that the soot pollution created by the 10,000 buildings that use No. 6 oil exceeds the amount created by all the cars and trucks in the city. At a seminar given by the Real Estate Board of New York earlier this month, a representative from the mayor\u2019s office said that while converting to natural gas can be expensive, switching from No. 6 to No. 4 oil could cost a building as little as $7,000. But contractors and consultants in the audience challenged that figure, saying it represented a best-case scenario \u2014 a building whose equipment needed only minimal upgrading.<\/p>\n

David Kuperberg, the chief executive of Cooper Square Realty, which manages about 450 buildings in New York City, described the extent of the work and the amount invested at the Brevoort as \u201cthe exception by a long shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his company had urged the owners of its buildings to make similar changes, \u201cbut there is a great deal of skepticism and people just don\u2019t believe the savings are there.\u201d Most co-op and condo boards, he said, would rather make incremental changes and take on one project at a time.<\/p>\n

About 100 of Cooper Square\u2019s 450 buildings use No. 6 oil. \u201cWe\u2019re in front of all our boards now,\u201d offering advice and information on what needs to be done, Mr. Kuperberg said. Wherever possible, Cooper Square encourages gas conversion. But \u201cthe initial cost scares off a lot of buildings,\u201d even though \u201cwe could prove the economics.\u201d He pointed out that the savings from gas conversion could pay for the upfront costs in a few years.<\/p>\n

The changes at the Brevoort did not come without pain.<\/p>\n

Vigorous efforts were made to unseat board members in the last two elections, with some unhappy residents likening members to harsh and unyielding prison wardens.<\/p>\n

But opposition candidates came shy of the votes they needed in both elections, and Ms. Nardone was re-elected this spring to her sixth term.<\/p>\n

The switch from No. 6 oil to natural gas cost the Brevoort $225,000. It involved replacing the burner on the boiler, removing two 20,000-gallon oil tanks, and installing equipment to draw gas from the available Consolidated Edison pipeline. The board expects to save as much as $70,000 a year in fuel costs.<\/p>\n

Ms. Nardone said that when she started exploring the conversion a few years ago, she knew the city was contemplating the regulation. \u201cWe realized that if we waited until it was required,\u201d she said, \u201ceverybody would be knocking on Con Ed\u2019s door at the same time and there would probably also be a shortage of contractors and a spike in prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Property managers and environmental experts say that gaining access to gas pipelines maintained by a utility like Con Ed or National Grid could be a huge hurdle for some buildings. As Isabelle Silverman, a lawyer with the Environmental Defense Fund, put it, \u201cThe infrastructure to bring gas lines to the buildings definitely has to be built out, and we don\u2019t know how long that would take.\u201d [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many of New York’s larger buildings are responding to the City’s demand that they stop burning the highly polluting No. 6 oil is a great hands on demonstration of how large buildings can come clean and make money doing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,401],"tags":[1273,1276,1272,1275,1277,65,1274],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973"}],"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=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1975,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions\/1975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}