With New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s real-estate industry working to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, Urban Green Council, the New York affiliate of the U.S. Green Building Council, has released a report taking a global view on ways to reach the goal.
The report, “Worldwide Lessons: What NYC Can Learn From Five Peer Cities,” examines sustainability best practices of other cities around the world and pinpoints tangible fixes New York City can make.
The report, produced with research led by Atelier Ten and underwritten by United Technologies Corp., compares key trends, policies, and implementation practices in New York City to those in Sydney, Australia; San Francisco; London; Frankfurt, Germany; and Singapore. It focuses specifically on three areas: energy code, building labeling, and workforce training. It proposes New York City:
- Consider a compliance metric based on carbon emissions or energy, rather than energy cost, and, for designers, provide incentives and remove barriers to the performance, as opposed to prescriptive, path.
- Investigate building energy labeling and expand its building benchmarking program to make it more powerful and accessible. Urban Green Council’s new Metered New York website makes all city-collected data on building energy use easy to access and compare.
- Explore a formalized approach to training and certifying its construction workforce, focusing on the skills and awareness needed to successfully implement sustainable building practices.
To read the full report, go to http://urbangreencouncil.org/worldwidelessons.