Empire State Building Goes Green

The Empire State Building has been a lot of colors throughout the years, but it may become permanently green. NY1 reports that "Officials today unveiled a groundbreaking project to significantly reduce the building's energy consumption." This would include replacing 6,500 windows with new ones that would reduce the heat in the summer and reduce heat loss in the winter, and a new system would allow tenants to control their own temperatures. The project will cost about $20 million, but it will "cut energy use by 38 percent, which will save $4.4 million a year in energy costs"—Bloomberg hopes that other buildings will follow suit. The NY Times notes that the job will be underway come this summer.

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By Jen Carlson in News on April 6, 2009 3:23 PM

Comments [rss]

Ed

This building is so crappy beyond the first floor it needs millions of upgrades. Good that they are green. Until last month, I worked on the 60th floor with about 250 other people, mostly men, with two toilets!! Never have I worked in a major building with amenities so lacking. The windows are originals! You can open them up all the way and choose to fall out if you want to do so. I worked there for 6 months on a daily basis when renovations were supposed to be ongoing but never once did I see a worker on the ground floor, which is both scaffolded internally and externally, or any other floor doing renovations. The landlord is trying to drum up tenants in my opinion to get the money to do the renovations it has promised pre-existing tenants.

Toby von Meistersinger

How much does lighting up the building at night cost?

Trilby16

I just did something similar-- I replaced a 20 year old refigerator with new one that will use less energy (plus it's bigger and prettier).

Maybe I should put a bunch of green lights on top of my house to advertise my new GREEN status!

SikBug

I asked this in another article but didn't see anyone respond. Has anyone noticed the ESB lights have been staying lit much later at night than normal? They used to go out right at midnight now I see them on up until 2am. Not very green...