Making existing buildings green

Giving existing buildings a good carbon footprint and to make them sustainable in a modern way will take effort and time. A new model being built for the Empire State Building is aiming at providing recommendations that would help increase the building’s energy efficiency without harming bottom-line performance.
According to RMI’s Chief Scientist Amory Lovins we need a replicable model for retrofitting existing buildings. The existing building mass is of course pivotal in achieving climatic improvements because changes require investment, are slow to implement and new buildnings are relatively few. Models and criteria are also at this time not available.
The project will look into improvements, including window retrofits, daylighting, a radiator insulation retrofit, and a whole-building control system upgrade, reducing energy consumption by close to 40 percent and cutting the building’s overall carbon output.

Criteria for sustainability of buildings are being developed in many countries, but will usually mainly be used for new buildings.

The Empire State Building program

(Rocky Mountain Institute)

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