Empire Building Challenge Partners

Beam Living is excited to announce its partnership in the New York State’s Empire Building Challenge. The challenge, in participation with other key real estate groups, will help accelerate New York’s progress towards reducing greenhouse emissions. Beam Living is committed to decarbonizing Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to a 0% emissions level by 2030. In addition to carbon neutrality, Beam Living is committing to reaching a site energy use intensity (EUI) of 45 Kbtu/SF through energy efficiency improvements. Our new commitment builds on our existing focus of being industry leaders in sustainability and continuing to do our part to help combat climate change.

For over 100 years, The Durst Organization has prided itself as an industry leader in sustainable development including landmark projects such as 151 West 42nd Street the first green skyscraper, and the first LEED Platinum office-tower in the world, One Bryant Park. We look forward to continuing this tradition of innovation by committing One Bryant Park, 655 3rd Avenue, and 733 3rd Avenue to the Empire Building Challenge. One Bryant Park is targeting to reduce site EUI to 170.9 Kbtu/sf, 655 3rd Avenue to 81.7 Kbtu/sf, and 733 3rd Avenue to 72.8 Kbtu/sf. We propose a layered approach of building improvements and investments with a commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.

In addition to its goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its 10.1 million square foot portfolio by 2035, Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) recently announced in its 2020 Sustainability Report [PDF] plans to target a 20 percent reduction of energy use intensity across the portfolio by 2024, and net-zero carbon emissions for the Empire State Building by 2030. ESRT has begun to develop and execute a roadmap with dozens of sustainability strategies to reach the aggressive goals tied to The Empire Building Challenge, which include measures like envelope improvements, HVAC upgrades, controls upgrades, and advanced technology overlays for performance optimization. Each of these measures will be individually and holistically considered based on past learnings, value proposition, innovation pilots, and ROI.

A Joint Venture comprised of Trinity Church Wall Street, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Hines

Hines and the Hudson Square Properties joint venture commit to make 345 Hudson Street carbon neutral by 2032. The building will reduce its site Energy Use Intensity (EUI) by 69% from 2010 EUI level by 2032. The EUI of the building in 2010 was 126 kbtu/SF, and by 2032, we commit to reduce the EUI to 40 kbtu/SF.  

Jonathan Rose Companies has committed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2034 at two Jonathan Rose Companies properties in Manhattan: Yomo Toro, an 89-unit affordable housing property located at 222 East 104th Street, and The Tapestry, a 185-unit mixed income, mixed-use apartment building with ground floor retail space located at 245 East 124th Street. The Company also commits to developing a carbon neutral building roadmap for each property that is anticipated to be owned beyond 2030 and integrate the interventions into the properties’ business plans. We aim to achieve site Energy Use Intensities (EUI) of 25.5 Kbtu/SF, which is 70% below New York City’s median site EUI for multifamily properties by implementing measures to reduce loads within the building through envelope improvements and aggressive energy efficiency and controls, while simultaneously improving indoor environmental quality by providing filtered fresh air with energy recovery. Heating, hot water, and laundry systems will all be powered by electricity.

L+M Fund Management and our partner, Invesco, are committed to decarbonizing The Heritage, a 3-building, 680,000- square foot mixed-use development with 600 mixed-income residential units, to a 0% emissions level by 2030. Completing this is expected to result in a site energy use intensity of 45 kBTU/SF, which represents a 54% reduction from the 2010 baseline.

Omni New York has committed to turning one of our properties, Whitney Young Manor -- a 195-unit affordable housing property located in Yonkers, New York -- carbon neutral by 2035. Whitney Young Manor’s first year EUI was 87.7 in 2012, with a current EUI of 96 for 2019. Our goal is to get Whitney Young from the current EUI of 96 to the target EUI of 50 or below by 2035. Omni has selected Bright Power, a leading energy and water management company, as our Empire Building Challenge partner to determine the suite of deep energy retrofit improvements for this property and incorporate these measures into the scope of a planned rehabilitation in 2022.

Rudin Management Company has committed to achieving carbon neutrality on a portfolio-wide basis by 2050. As a proud participant of the Empire Building Challenge, we are proposing to accelerate that goal in our three project buildings: 80 Pine Street, 355 Lexington Avenue, 845 Third Avenue. 80 Pine Street will target a site EUI of 30 Kbtu/SF, 355 Lexington Avenue will target a site EUI of 37 Kbtu/sf, and 845 Third Avenue will target a set EUI of 39 Kbtu/SF.

We are committed to exploring new building technology solutions as they become available and implementing those and other energy saving and decarbonization measures to work towards our goal of carbon neutrality for the three buildings entered in the Empire Building Challenge by the year 2035.

Silverstein Properties, Inc. will commit to carbon neutrality in two (2) existing buildings as part of the Empire Building Challenge: 120 Broadway (The Equitable Building), and 1177 Sixth Avenue (Americas Tower). As each building is very different in its architectural and MEP elements, the project team will be challenged to refine the low carbon design concept in order to apply it across all building types with varying characteristics and typologies. Each building is targeting carbon neutrality per the SPI definition by 2030. 120 Broadway will use the prescribed 2010 baseline of 78.5 and will target a 40% reduction in site EUI from the baseline year to a targeted 2030 site EUI of 47.1. 1177 Sixth Avenue will also target a 40% reduction in site EUI to 51.8 in 2030 but will use a 2014 baseline of 86.4 instead of 2010.

Vornado has committed, through its Vision 2030 roadmap, to reach net zero emissions portfolio-wide by 2030, through a combination of emissions reductions strategies from our buildings. The roadmap to zero emissions prioritizes energy efficiency, with a target of 50% below 2009 levels by 2030.

Amalgamated Housing Corporation (AHC) is an affordable housing cooperative that was founded in 1927 and is the oldest limited equity housing cooperative in the United States (amalgamated-bronx.coop). AHC consists of over 1,500 moderate income units throughout 13 different buildings and over 1.5 million square feet in the Bronx. AHC is recognized as a leader in affordable housing and is committed to Cooperative Principles and enabling our residents to thrive. 

We look forward to continuing this tradition of innovation with our partners in NYSERDA by committing to carbon neutrality in our tallest buildings, Tower I and Tower II, at 3965 & 3975 Sedgwick Avenue as a part of the Empire Building Challenge. The towers consist of 316 affordable units, 20 stories, and a combined 425,000 square-feet. In the proposed buildings, we plan on reducing our overall energy use through deep and holistic carbon reduction measures. Towers I and II will use a baseline site EUI of 111.5 to target a 64% reduction to 40.0 EUI in 2035. 

We also commit to transparency and sharing of project information for knowledge transfer and education purposes. We are pleased to work with NYSERDA and our engineering and geothermal partners, EN-POWER GROUP (enpg.com) and Egg Geo (egggeo.com), on this exciting endeavor.

BXP has taken a leading role in advancing the transition to a low carbon economy. The company became a proud signatory of the We Are Still In pledge after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and aligned emissions reduction targets with the climate science. In 2020, the company was the first North American office company to set a science-based target ambition in line with a 1.5°C trajectory and has made a commitment to achieve carbon-neutral operations for emissions scopes 1 and 2 by 2025, including over 9 million square feet in New York.

In partnership with NYSERDA, BXP’s involvement in the Empire Building Challenge will advance the development and implementation of a decarbonization roadmap for 601 Lexington Avenue (formerly Citigroup Center), a 1.8 million square foot, 59-story office tower constructed in the late 1970s.  
The project aims to achieve

• net zero carbon operations by 2025
• a site energy use intensity of 50 kBTU/SF by 2035 (over 60% reduction from 2010 baseline)
• full electrification of the heating systems by 2035

Climate action is collective action. Knowledge gained from this effort will be shared and used to replicate similar solutions in other commercial buildings, including 6 million square feet of area within the BXP portfolio. BXP intends to continue working closely with the broader real estate community and stakeholders to advance the transition to a low carbon economy.  

Brookfield plans to achieve carbon neutrality for 660 5th Avenue for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2035 as well as for all remaining properties within the New York City portfolio no later than 2050. In addition to carbon neutrality, 660 5th Avenue will target achieving a 38% reduction in site energy use intensity to 75 kBtu/SF or below by 2035.

Equity Residential is one of the nation’s largest publicly traded owners and operators of high-quality rental apartment properties. Equity Residential owns and manages 88M square feet of over 300 multifamily assets, totaling more than 80,000 units in 10 markets nationwide.

Equity Residential’s corporate purpose is “creating communities where people thrive” and it has more than a decade of global and national leadership in the sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) space. Equity Residential has committed to a 30% per square foot reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, portfolio-wide, by 2030 from a 2018 baseline year. This goal is aligned with the Science-Based Target Initiative’s (SBTi) framework intended to maintain global warming well below 2ºC. 

As one of the largest public owners of market rate multifamily real estate in New York, Equity Residential has a deep understanding of the challenges of managing, maintaining, and improving existing multifamily buildings. Moreover, it recognizes its unique opportunity to serve as a model for others throughout the industry in demonstrating viable, replicable pathways of existing building decarbonization. 

With that in mind, in partnership with NYSERDA, Equity Residential submitted 2 multifamily buildings for application into the Empire Building Challenge.  These highly viable candidates were selected based on energy performance, age, central system make-up and electrification goals:  777 6th Avenue and 180 Montague, both high rise residential buildings located in Manhattan and Brooklyn respectively. At each building, Equity Residential will target to reduce the sites’ energy use intensity (EUI) by approximately 50% to support our goal of decarbonizing our New York State portfolio. 

LeFrak is committed to decarbonizing LeFrak City Plaza, a 20-story office building located in Corona, Queens that currently serves as the headquarters to NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection. The building, erected in 1970, will target to reduce its energy use intensity to 65 kBtu/SF by 2035 which represents a greater than 50% reduction from a 2010 baseline of 131.7 kBtu/SF. 

Tishman Speyer is committed to operational Net Zero Carbon by 2050 or sooner (covers whole building consumption, inclusive of tenant usage). Through the EBC we are committing to Net Zero Carbon for 520 Madison by 2035, and we look forward to the EBC helping us accelerate our company-wide commitments through our work on this project.