Remarks from the 2004 Planners Network Conference
"High Performance Buildings in NYC"

Jeremy Reiss
Project Director, Urban Agenda
June 26, 2004

Good morning. My name is Jeremy Reiss and I am the Co-Director of Urban Agenda. Urban Agenda provides opportunities for labor leaders to connect with other social movements in order to build power and create a more socially, economically, and environmentally just NYC. We conduct strategic research to support organizing campaigns (both for the labor movement and for community-based organizations); policy analysis and advocacy; and coalition building activities.

We are implementing this approach to address the question of energy through our NYC Apollo project. NYC Apollo convenes diverse stakeholders - labor, environmental justice, environmentalists, business, government, and educators - to address the city's energy future in a far-sighted, systemic, and equitable way that creates jobs, strengthens communities, and ensures that NYC maintains its competitive edge.

From a labor standpoint, energy independence translates into job creation: wind power creates 2.77 jobs for every MW produced; solar PVs create 7.24 jobs per MW; and geothermal creates 5.67 jobs per MW. Healthy and high performance buildings provide a tremendous opportunity here.

NYC Apollo is part of a national movement spearheaded by the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance is advocating for a significant public sector investment in clean energy and good jobs. The national project provides a framework for how the regional and local Apollo projects operate and engage labor leaders. The fact that 17 international unions have signed-off on the Apollo agenda strengthens our case for broadening the coalition in New York City. And our local research, organization, and communications strategy provides the legs that are building the grassroots movement supporting Apollo.

Healthy and high performance buildings are important to us and to New York City in a number of ways.

First, healthy 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. Worker training, re-training, and education is absolutely critical and has the potential to help fuel the market. Our city depends on a highly-skilled labor force.

Next, it is absolutely critical that New York City maintains a thriving manufacturing sector. High performance buildings present the opportunity to create a green re-industrialization. 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.

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. What NYC Apollo seeks to do is to bring an environmental justice perspective into energy planning in NYC so that the increasing demand for power does not continue to be simply addressed by the citing of 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. NYC Apollo is saying that the EJ movement needs to be engaged at the onset of these planning discussions.

This past week Peter Smith, the president of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, stated that 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.

NYC Apollo will allow us to shape energy planning in New York City in a way that is equitable, far-sighted, and systemic. It will allow us to ease the burden on low-income communities of color that overwhelmingly feel the effects of current energy planning. And it will promote a positive job creation alternative that allows the city to retain its competitive edge.