This is what The Delta is

Always wondered just what the hell this was supposed to be and finally looked it up:

The Delta is the 1st building in NYC to be 100% powered by solar and utilizes many renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that significantly decrease it's energy use by more then 75% compared with the average building.

Voltaic Solaire's goal with the project: "If we can develop a building that powers itself, on an unusual triangular lot in one of the most code-heavy cities in the world, our hope is to serve as a model, and inspire other developers around the world to do the same."

You can supposedly take a tour of it, too.

Small number of building use a whole lot of energy

From AM-NY:

Two percent of the city's buildings use 45% of the city's energy, according to a new report by Climate Works For All.

The organization, part of The Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN) and focused on combating climate change while creating jobs, used data that is publicly available through the city's energy consumption reporting requirements, enacted as part of the Greener, Greater Buildings (GGBP) laws.

ALIGN claims that among the worst offenders are luxury residential buildings that, through outsize amenities, end up consuming much more energy than the majority of other residential buildings in the city.

On Tuesday, members of the group, along with representatives from New York Communities for Change and other associations, held a rally at the corner of West 57th street and Sixth Avenue, on so-called "billionaire's row."

Between leading chants through a megaphone, Josh Kellermann, a senior analyst for ALIGN, said that the organization wants to work with the City Council to expand the energy regulations governing city buildings.

Existing GGBP laws, which apply to buildings of over 50,000 feet, do not go far enough and rely too heavily on participation in voluntary programs, according to the organization. Currently, buildings receive energy audits but are not necessarily required to follow recommendations.

Buildings marketed as "green" not really so

From the NY Times:

A dozen construction workers gathered around a flatbed truck in Long Island City, Queens, one recent Tuesday, marveling at the final piece of a new 15-story apartment building they had just finished assembling. As a mobile crane hoisted the 20-foot-long black contraption over Pearson Street, many of the workers used their phones to film its ascent.

What looked like a huge carbon-fiber strand of DNA strung around a 10-foot mast was the last of three wind turbines being installed atop the Pearson Court Square, a 197-unit luxury apartment building.

In an industry, a city and a society obsessed with being green, wind turbines remain scarce — only two apartment buildings in New York City harvest the skies for energy, with limited yields.

But in the past few weeks, two new installations have popped up, the one on Pearson Street and another atop what is now Brooklyn’s tallest building, 388 Bridge Street. At least half a dozen more are on the horizon.

As with most green innovations, L&M also had the government on its side. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority helped pay about half the $100,000 installation cost, and will study the turbines’ efficacy.

For many sustainability advocates, that is precisely the issue. “A tiny windmill on a big building is just silly — it might as well be a pinwheel,” said Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council. “It’s a lovely idea, if people want to pay for it and test it out, but as far as return on investment goes, it’s a waste compared to more insulation and efficient building systems.”

L&M actually agrees. “We’re doing all we can to green the building, but it’s kind of hard to sell an apartment by showing people your high-tech boiler,” Mr. Dishy said. The three turbines should provide enough power, 12 kilowatts, to keep the lights on in all common areas, including the lobby, the hallways, the gym and a roof lounge from which the whirligigs can be seen.

What they do outside the building is even more important than what they do inside — the turbines are visible from the No. 7 train platform and the Long Island Expressway and surrounding streets. With dozens of towers on the rise in Long Island City, anything to help a project stand out is good.

So taxpayers are basically funding their marketing scheme. Great.

People in glass houses really feel the heat

From the Wall Street Journal:

The skyline of New York is dotted with new glass condominium towers featuring some of the most expensive and sought-after apartments in the city.

But a new study is warning that there could be a price to pay for the grand views: Some high-rise apartments could become as overheated as a hot yoga studio in a prolonged summertime blackout, similar in duration to the one that followed superstorm Sandy.

In the winter, the study found that in a prolonged cold wave interior temperatures would plummet in glass towers during a blackout to a low of 35 degrees over seven days, but would fall even more in single-family homes and older brick apartment towers built with little insulation.

The study is part of a campaign by the Urban Green Council, a building industry group that worked on post-Sandy planning, to push New York developers to meet higher performance standards in the future. The council has called the glass-walled construction "a major step backward" environmentally; instead, it favors less exposed glass in new towers as well as expensive triple-pane glass and other improvements.

Phasing out dirty oil to take a long time

From Metro:

Black smoke will still billow out of apartment buildings and into the city’s air — even with new laws phasing out pollutants.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed regulations for the city’s buildings Thursday, requiring owners to switch to cleaner heating oils.

But the ban on the two worst heating oils — which health experts say cause pollution and health problems like asthma — will not completely take effect until 2030.

Starting immediately, owners will be denied a permit to heat their building unless they use natural gas, or step down to a less sulfuric heating oil, such as No. 2.

Building owners will have until 2015 to stop using the most noxious heating oil, No. 6.

But building owners still have until 2030 to keep burning No. 4.

City has a lot of cleaning up to do

From NY1:

The Bloomberg administration is proposing new rules to rid the city of dirty heating oil that emits unhealthy black smoke into the air. But it turns out the city itself is one of the worst offenders when it comes to burning the filthy fuel.

The city is proposing to ban the dirtiest type of heating oil by 2015. By 2030, only oil with lowest level of sulfur or natural gas will be allowed.

City officials say there are 455 city-owned buildings that use the two worst kinds of heating oils: number four and number six. In all, there are said to be close to 9,000 buildings citywide that do the same.

"These buildings burning four and six oil create more air pollution than all the cars and trucks combined in the city," said Isabelle Silverman of the Environmental Defense Fund.

A spokesman for the DEP says city buildings would not be exempt from the new regulations.

Rockaway YMCA may be delayed

From the Wave:

The new Rockaway YMCA planned for the corner of Beach 73 Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard has all of its permits and the foundation piles have been driven.

“Permits have been issued and work can proceed,” says Gerard Romski, the project manager for Arverne By The Sea, the developer that is footing some of the bill for the project. “We just have to resolve one last minute issue between the city and the YMCA.”

That issue may well detour the project for at least a year and possibly longer.

The YMCA has discovered a new source of funding that, if it materializes, will allow the local Y to have an enclosed gymnasium, something that Rockaway residents have demanded from the beginning.

That sounds like a positive development, until you factor in the Catch-22.

Adding the roof to the gymnasium raises the cost of the capital project to more than $12 million, which automatically triggers Local Law 86, which was passed by the city council in 2005 and took effect in 2007.

Local Law 86 says that capital projects that include city money with an estimated construction cost of more than $12 million and less than $30 million must be designed and constructed to reduce energy costs by a minimum of 20 percent as prescribed by a very strict set of national standards.

The original plans for the Y do not meet those national standards.

Everything old is new again, part 2

From the Daily News:

Located on the water's edge at the World Financial Center in the outdoor plaza at 220 Vesey St., the Country Living House of the Year comes to New York City for the first time in its 20 years. Showing off modular, green housebuilding from Jersey City-based New World Home, the house proves that eco-friendly, LEED homes come easy (100 days from order to delivery) and can combine traditional lines with modern technologies.

This home uses no alternative energy sources such as solar panels but can still save thousands of dollars per year in electricity and heating costs and use 60% of the energy of a code-built house.

Of course, the house is for sale. In a partnership between forward-thinking Country Living and New World, the magazine will offer a range of homes. This one, aptly called the Hudson, costs $575,000 and $375,000 in simplest form.

For more info, see countryliving.com. Free tours are available on site through June 17.

Bloomberg's green initiative fails

From the NY Times:

After intense opposition from building owners, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has dropped the most far-reaching initiative of his plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Michael R. Bloomberg, at an environmental-themed event in September, is weakening a package of bills that would cut emissions.

The plan, which the owners said was too costly, called for all buildings of 50,000 square feet or more to undergo audits to determine which renovations would make them more energy efficient, and for owners to then pay for many of those changes.

The mayor wants to go forward with the proposal to require energy audits, but now is leaving it up to the building owners whether to undertake the changes called for by those audits.

It would have put New York far ahead of other cities in the green-buildings movement. Many cities require that newly constructed buildings be energy efficient, but do not impose those standards on existing properties. Some 22,000 buildings, together accounting for nearly half the square footage in the city, would have been affected.

So much for that...

From the Brooklyn Paper:

A building that was once dubbed “one of the last success stories of the great boom” is already undergoing repairs to its leaky facade less than two years after construction was finished.

Scaffolding now covers most of the “green” condo building at 515 Fifth Ave. as workers fix leaks in what one worker called “a bad waterproofing issue.”

“They did a bad job on the building,” said the worker. “They’re using this foam stuff [an artificial material called Parex] and a skin coat of cement. That’s what they use with all these buildings. You go to all the buildings on Fourth Avenue, you see this.”

The building’s architect, Joanna Frank, didn’t make it sound that bad, calling the work just “maintenance on the facade,” but she abruptly cut off the conversation, saying, “This all sounds very gossipy. I don’t want to discuss anymore with you” before the line went dead.

The LEED conspiracy

From the NY Post:

The USGBC claims LEED buildings are 25 percent to 30 percent more energy efficient, a figure based on a 2007 study it commissioned from the New Buildings Institute. But Gifford figured out that USGBC fudged the study by comparing the median energy usage of a LEED sample to the mean (or average) usage of non-LEED buildings. By taking the mean value of both distributions, he found the same data indicated that LEED projects use 29 percent more energy than non-LEED buildings.

No one knows for sure why, but clearly, the group's energy-modeling tools and arcane point system fail to predict how real-life mechanical systems function and tenants behave. For example, Gifford's report showed a picture of the Hearst Tower on 57th Street -- billed as New York's first green skyscraper -- with its lights blazing at night.

Follow-up reviews of the study have confirmed the inaccuracy of the USGBC's claims. "There is no justification for USGBC claims that LEED Certified commercial buildings are using significantly less electricity or have significantly lower greenhouse-gas emission associated with their operations than do conventional buildings," wrote Oberlin College researcher John Scofield in a paper last month.

So why is LEED so popular? Well, it lets politicians cloak themselves in the garb of environmental activism without upsetting real-estate interests. Thus, when city and state lawmakers imposed their sweeping regulations here in New York, they never bothered to check LEED's claims.

For developers, LEED is a source of tax credits, a potent marketing tool and protection from environmental criticism. It has given rise to a whole new industry of "accredited" consultants -- a constituency that's grown to over 100,000 who get paid to advise developers on how to get their project certified and to assess buildings.

And the program has been good for the "nonprofit" USGBC, which reported a 300 percent growth in revenue from 2005 to 2007. The group rakes in tens of millions of dollars each year from examination and conference fees, member dues and speaking engagements. Many of the same people who developed the USGBC rules make money as private LEED consultants, members say.

But there's a hefty cost here. While estimates vary, developers and officials say LEED often adds 5 percent or more to project costs -- an expense that's passed on to the tenant or (in the case of public works) to the taxpayer.

Queens Council members go green

From NY1:

This election year, "going green" will be a popular position for candidates running for office. But which elected officials in Queens borough are as green as they say?

Gioia and White scored 100%, Gennaro and Katz scored 83%, Crowley scored 22% and Ulrich scored 17%. Watch story to find out why. (Some of it is pretty bogus.)