GREEN GAFFE
Pandemic leads to conflicts with city law that aims to cut gas emissions
The coronavirus pandemic has taken at least 19,000 lives in New York City. It has devastated the economy and crippled the city’s budget.
Those are facts many New Yorkers are familiar with.
But what is less widely known is that COVID-19 — and the measures taken to keep people safe from it — could now complicate ambitious measures intended to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, experts and building industry insiders say.
Last year, before COVID hit, the city enacted Local Law 97 to cap emissions given off by buildings that are 25,000 square feet or larger, or about 50,000 buildings in total.
The restrictions begin to go into effect in 2024 and are intended to cut emissions 80% by 2050. But building owners claim those goals have become harder to reach after the state instituted ventilation guidelines they must now adhere to in order to make their spaces safe for workers and anyone else inside.
“There’s a need to increase the rate of air replacement and have greater filtration,” said Jordan Barowitz, head of government relations for the Durst Organization, which owns and operates dozens of buildings in the city. “To make a space more COVID-safe, you’re using more carbon, and you’re penalized by Local Law 97.”
Along with the 11 commercial skyscrapers and six mixeduse residential buildings the company has, it also owns 2,400 units of rental housing, which come with a similar responsibility.
“We need to ensure that our city’s housing are healthy places to live,” he said.
That will cost money — both in terms of the amount of energy that’s being used and any penalties that may stem from increased emissions.
If all building owners covered under Local Law 97 decided to retrofit their buildings to stay within its requirements, the estimated cost would be $20 billion over the next decade, according to the Urban Green Council, a group dedicated to making buildings more environmentally friendly. But it’s unclear what the cost might be if owners choose to adhere to the law through other options, which include using renewable energy credits or a carbon trading scheme.
Proponents of Local Law 97, which is also known as the city’s Green New Deal, are quick to point out that it could lead to the creation of up to 140,000 new jobs if strictly adhered to. They contend that the real estate industry’s latest concerns are nothing more than a thinly veiled push to water down the new requirements so top emitters like Trump Tower and the Seagram Building don’t have to be brought under the law’s guidelines.
“The real estate industry bitterly opposed the passing of New York City’s Green New Deal law,” said Pete Sikora, who sits on an advisory board created under the law. “There is now a coordinated push to weaken it.”
Sikora, who also serves as climate campaigns director for New York Communities for Change, noted that buildings are the leading cause of air pol
lution in the city and that because the law goes into effect in 2024, the real estate industry has plenty of time to adjust.
“The pandemic is going to be over by 2024,” he said.
John Mandyck, the Urban Green Council’s CEO, said the issues now facing building owners and the city should not be framed as an either/or scenario, and that instead of trying to change Local Law 97, the industry should be focused on identifying technology that can address both problems.
“We can’t sacrifice climate for health and we can’t sacrifice health for the climate,” he said. “Climate change is not putting itself on pause because of COVID-19.”
Mayor de Blasio’s administration appears to agree.
“We simply can’t wait to act on climate change, and tackling our largest source of emissions, our buildings, is essential,” said City Hall spokeswoman Julia Arredondo. “The city offers a variety of tools to owners to help them meet these requirements and implement retrofits, which will also save them operating costs moving forward.”
Building owners like the Durst family are wealthy people. But they argue they still need to budget for the future — and doing so is becoming less and less clear due to COVID-19.
Zachary Steinberg, vice president of policy and planning at the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents the real estate industry, said, “2024 could be tomorrow in the capital life-cycle planning of a building. 2030 is not that far off. The hardest part of this is what do you do to get into compliance in many of these buildings. Owners are spending a lot of time trying to figure out how do they get where the city wants them to go.”
Mandyck acknowledged owners’ planning needs, but emphasized that resolving the new COVID-related ventilation issues will take time regardless.
“This isn’t something we need to solve next month,” he said.
Local Law 97 required that the advisory board be created to provide guidance to building owners, but Barowitz and others say it has so far provided little help.
One person familiar with the inner workings of the group said it still hasn’t discussed the implications of COVID-19.
“They’re not pushing back time lines, and all this stuff is expensive,” the source said. “None of it is being adjusted.”
Mandyck noted that the group is not empowered to address COVID-19, but Sikora said the group has, in fact, discussed its implications.
“These are not good-faith criticisms,” Sikora warned.
But building owners are making noise. According to Steinberg, the current situation has led to a steady stream of calls from concerned Real Estate Board members since the outset of the pandemic.
“We’re spending an inordinate amount of time on this,” he said. “When you know you’ve got, in some cases, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in penalties coming down the line, you’re going to want to solve for that problem. But solving for that problem takes investment, and that, particularly in this cycle right now with the economy, [is] challenging.”