WCA November 2013

How, then, could the Bank of America Tower have commended itself to the non-profit US Green Building Council (USGBC), which unveiled LEED in 1998 as a way to measure a building’s environmental footprint? This has grown into the most popular certification system anywhere for green buildings, with some 50,000 structures either certified or in the certification process globally. “A stamp from LEED signals ‘green’ to the public, and it’s good for more than just [public relations],” wrote Mr Roudman. “Some certifications can be cashed in for tax credits. In fact, many cities, states and federal agencies now require new buildings to work with LEED.” Going platinum The explanation for the Bank of America Tower’s LEED certification may be found in the programme’s point system, which takes into account such factors as building materials, air quality, water conservation and – of course – energy performance. When enough points are accumulated, the project is rated Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum (the highest rating). While LEED has helped create a market for sustainability, Mr Roudman asserted that real-estate developers have been able to rack up points for relatively minor environmental interventions. He cited a USA Today series from October 2012 which found developers accruing points by posting educational displays throughout a building and installing bike racks. The 50 points earned by the Bank of America Tower (two more than needed to be certified Platinum) included those awarded for building near public transportation; protecting or restoring habitat in Bryant Park, the landmarked public space under its windows; and working with a LEED-accredited professional. This last was ‘most important,’ according to Mr Roudman, who wrote: “LEED certified the building under its programme, which it designed for developers who have either no clue or no control over what their tenants might do inside the building.” While its owner presumably knew what would be going on inside the Bank of America Tower, the developer and architect had no control over how much energy would be required to support those activities. ❖ As noted in ‘New York’s ‘Greenest’ Skyscraper,’ the biggest drain on energy in the Bank of America Tower is its trading floors: giant fields of workstations with five computer monitors to a desk. Assuming no one turns these computers off, in a year’s time one desk uses roughly the energy that would keep a 25-mile-per-gallon car engine going for more than 4,500 miles. The servers supporting all those desks also require enormous energy, as do the systems that heat, cool and light the massive trading floors after normal business hours. These spaces take up nearly a third of the Bank of America Tower’s 2.2 million total square feet. ❖ Mr Roudman acknowledged that many of the Bank of America Tower’s ‘bells and whistles’ prevent it from consuming even more energy – and much of the

❖ Energy efficiency aside, reducing noise could cut down on NIMBY fights when it comes to getting wind projects built, and could perhaps allow the turbines to be built slightly closer to where people live. Here, Mr Levitan may be over-optimistic. While largely anecdotal, reports of health problems traceable to wind turbine noise (and of ‘shadow flicker,’ the strum of shadows and reflections cast by the whirling blades) are persistent and worrisome. What is clear, in Mr Levitan’s view, is that ‘cutting down on noise would benefit pretty much everybody, whether or not they live near turbines.’ ‘Toxic tower’ Green? Greenish? Or quite otherwise? Challenging the environmental credentials of a much-praised building in Manhattan When the Bank of America Tower on New York City’s Avenue of the Americas was dedicated, in 2010, the billion-dollar, 55-storey crystal skyscraper was hailed as one of the world’s most environmentally responsible high-rise office buildings. In two powerful endorsements of its greenness, it was awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification — the first ever for a skyscraper; and it had as a tenant the environmental movement’s biggest celebrity, former US vice-president Al Gore. However, according to data released by New York City in autumn of 2012, the building termed by its developer ‘the most sustainable in the country’ in fact produces more greenhouse gases and uses more energy per square foot than any office building of comparable size in Manhattan. It uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the 80-year-old Empire State Building. And it also performs worse than the Goldman Sachs headquarters, perhaps its closest counterpart in the city – and with a lower LEED rating. Writing in the New Republic this past summer, New York-based journalist Sam Roudman declared that the energy inefficiency of ‘Bank of America’s Toxic Tower’ is not “just an embarrassment: it symbolises a flaw at the heart of the effort to combat climate change.” (‘New York’s ‘Greenest’ Skyscraper Is Actually Its Biggest Energy Hog,’ 28 th July). Supplying some context for his indictment, Mr Roudman noted that buildings contribute more to global warming than any other sector of the world economy. In the US, they consume more energy and produce more greenhouse gas emissions than every car, bus, train and jet plane combined; and more, as well, than all American factories, taken together. “When we’re not travelling between buildings, we’re inside them,” he wrote. “And that requires energy for everything from construction to heating and cooling to running appliances.”

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2013

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