The Biggest Apple in the Big Apple Is Going Green

New York city’s most iconic image, the Empire State Building, is about to undergo a ‘green’ makeover. Soon, one of the nation’s oldest buildings will be in the top 10 percent of the greenest buildings in America.

Who says only new buildings can be green?

Leading the way in this green revolution is former US President Bill Clinton. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Tony Malkin of the Empire State Building Company, and the energy and construction partners joined Mr. Clinton to bring this retrofitting project together.

• » See also: The Green Elements of CAR Expo 2009
• » Get Green Building Elements by RSS or sign up by email.

How Green Will It Be?

A package of eight recommended projects will together reduce the office tower’s energy use by 38 percent, lower its annual energy cost by $4.4 million, and decrease its carbon emissions by 105 metric tons. Talk about saving some serious green as well!

The major refrofit will include insulation and lighting, triple-glazing all of the building’s 6,500 windows so that they block heat-inducing sunlight, and putting in place a Web-based monitoring system that allows tenants to take tally of their own energy consumption.

While most big businesses are cutting costs by doing less, the Empire State building is cutting long-term costs by doing more. Financial supremacy is not the only issue that businesses need to nurture, the environment must become a priority for big businesses in order to be sustainable.

“We’ll never conquer climate change until we prove it is good business to do so,” said Clinton.

I say, a new mantra in corporate American should be ‘if it’s good for the environment, it’s good for business’. In the long-run, if businesses continue to pollute the environment and waste energy at the rate they are now, it will come back to haunt them financially as well.

I applaud the city of New York for making such a statement to the rest of the country, by showing that even though a building may be old, it can still function sustainably in a ‘green economy’.

Photo Credit: MJW5208, Flickr Creative Commons

Tweet This Post