Testimony to NYC Council Housing and Building Committee

"High Performance Buildings: Promoting Economic Development and a Healthy City"

Jeremy Reiss
Project Director, Urban Agenda

September 27, 2004

Good afternoon. My name is Jeremy Reiss and I am the Co-Project Director of Urban Agenda, a joint research and policy initiative of the NYC Central Labor Council and Queens College Labor Resource Center. Urban Agenda is spearheading NYC Apollo, a growing coalition of labor unions, business leaders, environmental justice advocates, and educators convened to optimize energy usage in a way that allows us to create jobs, revitalize underserved communities, and improve our internal and external environment.

We support Intro 324-A and Intro 438 as well as the larger issue of creating and retrofitting high performance buildings and infrastructure for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, healthy and high performance buildings are the wave of the future. Class A office space in the near term will, by definition, require the integration of healthy and high performance technologies. In order for NYC to maintain its competitive edge and to truly be a world class city, the infrastructure for high performance building design, construction, and maintenance must be developed and supported. The public sector has a key role, both through public policy and example, in making this a reality.

Intro 324-A, for example, in mandating new municipal construction be built according to energy efficient standards, will demonstrate the great economic, health, and environmental benefits of high performance buildings. Also, by taking the lead, Intro 324-A will prime the high performance building market by increasing demand, streamlining processes, and establishing what needs to be done to be successful. We believe Intro 324-A will help fuel the investment, construction, and production markets for high performance buildings and products. Likewise, Intro 438 - through its expedited permitting process - will encourage private developers to build according to energy-efficient standards, which the most recent research and practice shows does not need to be more expensive to build if energy-efficient principles are integrated from the onset.

Secondly, health and high performance buildings are not a project, they are 100 years of work. When we look at our built environment, we have an amazing potential to create good jobs for workers to build and retrofit high performance buildings for the next century. In addition, technologies that can help power high performance buildings have been proven to generate jobs. Through production and installation, wind power creates 2.77 jobs for every Megawatt produced; solar photovoltaic installations create 7.26 jobs per Megawatt; solar thermal creates 5.93 jobs per Megawatt; and geothermal creates 5.67 jobs per Megawatt . (CALPIRG, Renewables Work, 2002). These job creation figures are especially important now that New York has passed a 24 percent renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which will increase market certainty for renewables and investments in local production capacity, and thus we hope will spur job creation and cut our city's unemployment rate.

Next, it is absolutely critical that New York City maintains a thriving manufacturing sector, a source of good, family sustaining jobs. A strong manufacturing sector is a leading indicator of a strong economy. High performance buildings present the opportunity to develop a green industrial sector that would produce the products - i.e., solar panels, window fixtures, energy efficient heating and cooling systems, etc. - that support the high performance building market.

We are constantly disappointed when we hear that far-sighted engineers, developers, and architects must turn to Canada, the west coast, and even Europe to find the products they need to build high performance buildings and infrastructure. There is no reason that these products can not be produced here. NYC has the talent and the capacity to become a global manufacturing center for the high performance building market. We must capitalize on our proximity, and help manufacturers in decline transition to the new. The economic vitality of our city and the lives of our workers depend on it.

Critical to the success and expansion of the high performance building market is high quality worker training designed in conjunction with labor unions and employers in order to best meet industry's needs and workers' realities. Our city depends on a highly-skilled labor force, and in the future the Council must seek to link this economic development strategy to a comprehensive workforce development approach that includes pilot training programs for unemployed, dislocated, and incumbent workers throughout the city.

Furthermore, healthy and high performance buildings have the potential to revolutionize the way the city is powered. Our waterfront and other neighborhoods are being rezoned and luxury residential construction is on the rise. Residents increasingly demand air conditioners, dish washers, and other amenities, yet do not want power plants sitting in their back yards. An increasing demand for power cannot continue to be simply addressed by citing power plants in the city's poorest neighborhoods. This is absolutely inequitable and forces us to rethink the question of how our city is powered.

According to the NYC Energy Policy Task Force, our city will need 3,780 additional Megawatts of capacity by 2008, which roughly translates into 5 large power plants. High performance buildings will help reduce this need, and unlike our current approach to energy, will promote neighborhood health. The Freedom Tower will be the city's first building powered entirely by alternative sources - including wind turbines in the building's infrastructure and technologies enabling us to utilize the power generated by underwater currents. This is a development that should serve as a model for how we plan our built environment.

High performance buildings are an important part of a larger strategy for a strong economy and healthy city. As others here have testified, healthy and high performance buildings will also improve student performance, worker productivity, and the overall health of the city. In addition, energy efficiency and distributed technologies promote load management and system stability, which is especially important in our city which relies heavily on networks, credit card machines, internet, refrigeration, communications, electric cash registers, electronic security systems, and neon lights that operate day and night.

We look forward to working with the Council on Intro 324-A, Intro 438, and other future legislation and demonstration programs that support high performance buildings and infrastructure, and other initiatives that strengthen our economy and city's overall health.