NYC To Force Buildings To Cut Emissions In Own 'Green New Deal'

NEW YORK — Owners of New York City skyscrapers will have three decades to sharply cut back the amount of climate change-fueling chemicals they spew into the air under a bill lawmakers passed Thursday.

The city's largest buildings — such as the Empire State Building — will have to meet strict benchmarks with the goal of eventually reducing their emissions 80 percent by 2050 under the City Council-backed measure. The worst offenders will have to start cutting emissions by 2024, and all those that fail to meet the goals would face fines.

The bill — which Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he would sign — is one of five pieces of legislation in the Council's Climate Mobilization Act, which Speaker Corey Johnson called the city's version of "Green New Deal," a proposal to shift the nation to renewable energy sources.

"Who knows what we’ll prevent — the storms that we’ll prevent, the climate change we’ll prevent, the flooding we’ll prevent, the environmental justice that we’ll achieve — by doing this now," Johnson, a Democrat, said Thursday.

The emissions bill aims to shrink the carbon footprint of the massive buildings that produce a disproportionate share of the city's greenhouse gases, said Councilman Costa Constantinides (D-Queens), the bill's lead sponsor. Just 50,000 of the city's 1 million buildings are responsible for 30 percent of the emissions here, he said.

The legislation sets varying emission limits for 10 categories of spaces and threatens penalties for those that don't meet the targets. Those rules apply to buildings larger than 25,000 square feet but several types exempt, including city-owned buildings, rent-regulated housing and houses of worship.

The measure would also establish a new Office of Building Energy and Emissions Performance within the Department of Buildings to help implement the targets.

It's likely to be an expensive undertaking for property owners — the necessary upgrades would cost more than $4 billion, though owners would get that money back because they would have smaller expenses, The New York Times reported.

Another bill passed Thursday would set up a program to help more building owners make such alterations. The so-called Property Assessed Clean Energy program would allow efficiency and renewable-energy projects to get financing with a small down payment or none at all, the Council says.

While environmentalists hailed it as a critical and ambitious step, the emissions measure drew opposition from the Real Estate Board of New York, a prominent industry trade group. While it supported the legislation's goals, the group said it would only cover half the city's building stock.

"The approach taken today will have a negative impact on our ability to attract and retain a broad range of industries, including technology, media, finance, and life sciences, that provide opportunity and continued economic growth that is so important for our city," REBNY President John Banks said in a statement.

But Johnson said the group's arguments pale in comparison to the threat of climate change.

"REBNY should not be chicken little," he said. "They should deal with the facts and the science and the existential threat that is facing our planet."