Statewide Benchmarking in NY: A Path to Climate Progress

Transcript

Please be aware that this transcript was generated by an AI system and may contain errors or inconsistencies.

Ellen Honigstock: Hi everybody and welcome to Urban Greens podcast, Building Tomorrow, where we have conversations with climate solvers. Every day we meet people who make a big difference in the built environment and are moving us closer to a low carbon future. And we want you to hear their stories. Before we begin today’s episode, I’d like to thank Carrier, our podcast sponsor. My name is Ellen Honigstock. I’m the Senior Director of Education at Urban Green Council. And today I’m thrilled to welcome Danielle Manley, Associate Director of Policy here at Urban Green and one of my favorite colleagues. We’re actually welcoming Danielle back to the podcast because if you remember, Danielle and the rest of the research and policy team were part of the inaugural Building Tomorrow episode. So let’s get going.
First, Danielle, can you say hi so folks can recognize your voice? 

Danielle Manley: Hi, everyone. I am Danielle. Thanks for having me on

Ellen: The first question  we ask all of our guests is: can you tell us about your background and what path did you take to get to do the work you’re doing now? 

Danielle: Sure. So I am a lifelong New Yorker. I’ve lived all over New York state at this point. I did my undergrad at the University of Buffalo as an environmental policy major. After undergrad, I worked in a couple of nonprofits in the Buffalo space, including an environmental education nonprofit called Earth Spirit, where we would take K through 12 kids around and teach them about ecology and biology in an outdoor classroom. And then I went to grad school at the Columbia University Climate School and got my master’s degree in climate and society and focused a lot of my research on cities and climate change. And I wound up getting hired in the office that I did my graduate research in in the Center for Climate Systems Research. That office was a joint institute, actually, between Columbia University and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies where NASA’s really great power of global climate models, a few of which sat in the basement of that building that we worked in, helped to support the work that scientists were doing at Columbia University to research climate change. During my time there, I worked as project manager for the New York City Panel on Climate Change, which provides the climate science information that our mayor’s office uses for policy and planning for climate change. And I also worked with other groups to provide what we called co-generated climate risk information for stakeholders. And that’s just a fancy word to say, hey, what kind of questions matter for you and your stakeholders? And what can science do to help you inform your decision-making to prepare for climate change? So we worked with World Wildlife Fund, got to travel to some cool places around the world, looking at different climate impacts. And then I found this really awesome opportunity at Urban Green, who is doing so much good work in climate and New York City in this space. And it overlapped with a lot of the work that I had been doing, but it was also a new area to really challenge myself and grow and learn. And I’ve worked here on our Policy team for the past five and a half years with a really awesome group of people. Right now I manage our city policy and state policy work to advance building decarbonization. And it’s really exciting, so thanks for having me.

Ellen: Thank you very much. I’ve always been really interested in your background. Whenever I have a question about anything, Danielle is usually my first go-to. So today we’re talking about statewide benchmarking. And for any listeners who are not familiar with this, can you briefly tell us what is benchmarking and what does it tell us about a building? 

Danielle: Yeah. So at its most basic energy benchmarking is the tracking and reporting of energy and often water use in large buildings. So every building uses energy for different things like heating, cooling, lights and elevators. And benchmarking means measuring how much all of those different energy uses a building uses, reporting that to a platform and then often it’s used to compare it to other buildings of the same type. So multifamily buildings against multifamily buildings, commercial and commercial. And it assigns a grade to how your building uses energy. So you can see your energy use and compare yourself to other similar buildings.

And what it does is it helps people see “is my building doing well? Am I falling behind? Am I wasting energy or money? And are there things that we can do to make my building more efficient?” so benchmarking itself doesn’t require anybody to do anything other than track and report the energy use. It doesn’t fix the problems, but it shows you where they are. Big companies use benchmarking often. They have large buildings and part of the purpose they do that is energy use is part of their bottom line. It can show them where they are wasting energy and where there are opportunities to save money through improving energy use. And cities and states often use this data to make smarter laws. And it can be used to, again, save money for buildings across a municipality and meet climate goals. 

Ellen: Okay. The project that we want to talk about today is about benchmarking large buildings in New York state. So what impact does benchmarking large buildings have? Why are on the policy side, why are you starting with large buildings? 

Danielle: Yeah, so that’s a really great question. So large buildings are really important because even though there’s a smaller amount of them, they’re really key to climate progress because they account for a disproportionate share of energy use in a building. We have to start by looking under the hood at those buildings and we can’t manage their energy use if we’re not measuring it. So one of the biggest impacts it has is setting a baseline for measuring and monitoring progress. And like I said, many big building owners voluntarily benchmark their energy use and there are also benchmarking laws in place all over the country. New York City has been benchmarking for 15 years. There are also eight states and 45 other cities that have some type of benchmarking requirement for privately owned buildings. And the reason they do that is we know benchmarking works. So for example, since enacting benchmarking in New York City, we have demonstrated impact. So building owners are acting on that information. Over 75 % of facility managers reported operational changes and new investments and new equipment in New York City after we passed our benchmarking law. We’ve seen demonstrated energy savings and utility bill savings in buildings that benchmark. Again, we know that site energy use dropped 10 % over five years after buildings larger than 25,000 square feet began benchmarking here. And policymakers can use this to track impact over time. Again, New York City has these big climate goals. And we know that since 2010, when the really large building started benchmarking, carbon emissions have dropped 26%. And New York City agencies and lawmakers would not know this information without benchmarking. So at its most basic, it’s smart policies and it’s one of the only laws that we have that requires you to do something that will save you money. 

Ellen: That’s awesome. So you just published an article that we’ll link to on the resource page of the podcast. The article is about the opportunity for benchmarking in New York State. Can you tell us about that and why Urban Green wanted to put that out there? 

Danielle: Sure. So, like I said, we know benchmarking works. On average, the EPA estimates that buildings that benchmark save over 2 % on energy use each year, despite there not being any explicit requirement to make changes or improvements afterwards. And so the context behind this article is in 2019, New York State passed its own major climate law requiring that we reduce economy-wide emissions 85 % by the year 2050. Similar to New York City, in New York State, buildings are the leading source of statewide climate emissions with nearly a third of all emissions coming from the building sector. But we really have yet to move on requirements for existing buildings to improve energy efficiency or switch fuels. And benchmarking is a pretty low-hanging fruit that was one of the key policy recommendations in the climate plan, but it really hasn’t moved yet. So for us, we wanted to explore what is the potential here in New York state for benchmarking? What are the scale of buildings that could potentially benchmark? And ultimately, how could benchmarking help New York get on the path to reducing emissions in big buildings that exist today? 

Ellen: Okay, so what’s the status of the recommendation now? 

Danielle: There’s not a benchmarking law in place in New York state right now. And there’s no requirement for private buildings to track and report their energies. They, of course, could do that voluntarily if they like. But far fewer are going to do that without a requirement to do so. 

Ellen: That makes sense. In researching the article, you discovered some new data about large buildings in the state. Where did you find this data and what did it tell us? 

Danielle: Yeah, so in order to have a good benchmarking law and to know where buildings are using energy or wasting them. We didn’t really have until now a good data set that told us how big our buildings in New York state, how many of them are there, where are they? So we didn’t really have an idea of how many buildings a potential benchmarking law could apply to. New York City has a data set that’s publicly available that lets us track and monitor that. We do that at Urban Green all the time. You can see that on our website. But we came across at the end of last year, a little known data set that while it’s publicly available is not straightforward. It’s accessible by a FOIL request, a Freedom of Information request. And it is with the State Department of Tax and Finance. And that actually aggregates all of the property tax assessments from across the state into one data set. It’s very large and sprawling data set. And in that, we were able to actually get that information and explore where are big buildings in the rest of the state, what counties, how are they distributed, what are their property types? And that is really the first step towards benchmarking. And so by looking at this New York State property assessment and property inventory, it tells us the potential scale that benchmarking could have if we applied the practice. And so using that, found that 22,000 buildings are over 25,000 square feet outside of New York City. And that size threshold matters because that size, 25,000 square feet, is the size of buildings in New York City that are required to benchmark. So if a similar law, we want to see if a similar law applied to the rest of the state, what would that look like? And so what that number translates to is one third of all large buildings in New York State exist outside of New York City. And so I think that was a lot bigger than what we expected. I think a lot of people didn’t realize the scale of the number of really big buildings once you get beyond New York City. And the other thing it told us was that those large buildings make up 25 % of the total floor area of all buildings outside of New York City. And so I want to just explain why that’s important, why floor area is such a big deal because it might not be super intuitive to people. 

Ellen: You don’t say. 

Danielle: So like I said, even though, like you asked before, why big buildings matter, even though there’s fewer of them, they’re key to climate progress because they account for a disproportionate share of the energy use. And floor area can sometimes be an even better number than just the number of buildings to look at because that’s much more key to how much space is dedicated towards energy use and heating a space and power. So for example, in New York City’s benchmarking law, it covers about 50,000 of New York City’s 1 million buildings that are over 25,000 square feet. So that’s just 5% of the city’s total building stock, but they cover nearly 60 % of the total floor area. And we know that that small group of buildings now, thanks to benchmarking, we know that small groups of buildings contribute nearly half of all carbon emissions from buildings. So just by having a law like that in New York City in place, we’re tracking energy use in half of all buildings that are responsible for the biggest source of carbon emissions in New York City. So when we see something like a statewide number of 25 % of the total floor area, coming from a relatively small number of large buildings outside of New York City, this also likely represents a substantial portion of statewide energy use and carbon emissions. And so I’ll be clear, the data does not show us the energy use of those buildings, but we now know there’s a lot of them and they’re likely responsible for a lot of energy use. 

Ellen: That is really interesting. So, Danielle, what would benchmarking data about large buildings in the state tell us about the overall picture? Like how could it drive climate progress? 

Danielle: That’s a good question. So I don’t think I really explained too much yet, but it would do three big things. It would give owners the insights that they need to act. We already mentioned that just having this information drives people to make improvements because it saves them money. The second thing it would do is it would drive the market. So buyers and tenants want efficient buildings. They want to live in efficient buildings and they want to live in healthy buildings. And this process creates transparency around that. And third, this information, benchmarking large buildings in the state, would help policymakers target all the other solutions they’re trying to get at around building decarbonization and reaching state climate goals. And it’s especially important for people living in underserved communities. You might live in a big multifamily building and have no idea or no control over how your building uses energy and making that information transparent gives people who live in those buildings a little bit more information to work with and talk to their landowners about, can we make our building more efficient? Because that’s going to help lower my utility bills that I’m responsible for. And so those would be the three primary things that would happen if we advanced benchmarking in New York state. Like I said, benchmarking doesn’t itself require further action. If we had a benchmarking law, wouldn’t do that. And while other policies beyond that certainly help, it can drive big savings alone. As a part of this article, we wanted to apply that EPA statistic at benchmark buildings on average save around 2.4 % in annual energy use. So using this data, we looked at just the big  buildings in the city of Buffalo, and those big buildings make up around 113 million square feet of space. And we already know square footage can represent a really big deal. And we looked at the annual energy use of those kinds of property types in that region and estimated that their total annual emissions today are roughly equivalent to about 142,000 cars on the road. If all those large buildings saved just 2 % from benchmarking alone each year, that could lead to carbon savings of taking 3,400 cars off the road every year. And so if we think about that, we apply that wider across the whole state, you can start to envision the climate impact of just this minimal requirement alone of tracking and reporting energy use. And so it tells us benchmarking has real value in New York state and it’s an easy place to start.

Ellen: This is really interesting. I work at Urban Green. I do actually read the reports, but this is actually explaining much better for me and I really appreciate it. All right. So our last question for you is what do you think should happen next? Where do we currently stand on state benchmarking requirements? Where can we go from here? And is there anything that you want our listeners to know or do? 

Danielle: Sure. So right now some recommendations in the CLCPA are advancing. We have an all electric new requirement for new buildings. Our energy code is about to be more efficient than ever. Those were recommendations from the scoping plan. But some of the recommendations targeting existing buildings haven’t really moved forward, including benchmarking still. And while we haven’t seen a benchmarking law yet for large buildings and privately owned buildings, we have seen some progress in cities and towns across the state. We’ve seen that 84 cities and towns across the state have made government-owned municipal requirements. So like within their town, they’re saying government buildings have to track and report their energy use each year. And so that is progress. This is starting to get familiar with cities and towns across the state and 84 cities and towns is not a small number. But we just haven’t got there for private buildings yet. So we talk about this in the article, but we see two key pathways to make state benchmarking a reality. The first is to enact a statewide benchmarking law for large buildings like the one we have in New York City. Eight other states already have a similar law in place. New York City has this law in place. New York City could do it. It is really the lowest hanging fruit we can do. What that would mean is passing a bill by the state legislature and getting it signed by the governor. It’s a possibility, but it hasn’t really gained much traction yet. And there’s probably a mix of things driving that. There’s diverse politics once you get beyond New York City, there’s a hesitancy on building owners placing requirements that are non-technical. It’s been tried in a few other cities upstate, but didn’t really go anywhere. And I think, personally, one of the things I see is benchmarking for advocates is not really seen as a big sexy policy anymore compared to some of the other things that people are driving for. Data doesn’t get people as rallied as other topics. But we do know that this data is really helpful and ultimately it saves people money. So there’s a second potential pathway that we mentioned here that we think has promise. And I’m going to say what it is first and then I’ll explain what it means. It would be to automate benchmarking and public disclosure through something called the Integrated Energy Data Resource that New York State has created. So what is that?

Without getting too wonky, the Integrated Energy Data Resource or the acronym, IEDR, is a central energy data platform that was created by New York State at the direction of our Public Service Commission and is overseen by NYSERDA. And their purpose is to gather and organize energy information from all over the state into one secure digital place. Basically the premise is that right now, energy information is scattered all across utilities across New York state like Edison or National Grid or National Fuel. It’s scattered across government agencies and it’s scattered across building owners. And that makes it hard for people to know where energy is being wasted. It makes it hard for people to create programs that help target and save money for people. And it makes it hard to track progress on climate goals like cutting carbon emissions. So the IEDR is attempting to make energy data easier to find, making it easier to share and more useful. What it is attempting to collect is information that is relevant to our discussion. So how much electricity buildings use, what kind of energy systems they have, are there solar panels on them, do they have heat pumps, where is their energy coming from, is it gas, is it wind, is it coal? And so there’s a lot of potential for this IEDR, the Integrated Energy Data Resource Platform. It is in its early stages right now.

They’re doing some beta testing for some things to put out there, like making rate plan information public has been one of the early tools that they have put out there through this platform. But one idea that’s being explored is how that platform could be used to gather and share whole building energy use data from buildings statewide. And so that is the second piece. That’s the second recommendation we have in our article is this is potentially a straightforward path towards aggregating that data. It also takes the responsibility away from the building owner of reporting that, which can sometimes be seen as a barrier. They don’t have to act. just automatically gets populated. And then the information is there for owners, for tenants, any New Yorker to use to drive change in buildings. And it would be a tool that would seamlessly help state agencies and utilities make better programs and policies around planning for energy efficiency and climate change. 

Ellen: That’s really interesting. I’m glad that our listeners are able to have a better understanding of this stuff. Any last words that you want to add? 

Danielle: I would just say that we’re still digging through this big data set.I think there’s going to be more interesting information to come from Urban Green. Using that information, we are actively trying to give our advice and how we think this IEDR platform can be built out to serve benchmarking. It’s not going to solve everything. There are going to be some differences between what data disclosure on a platform like that and what energy benchmarking in the city might do. But we see it as creating this and putting this all in one central place makes it easier for decisions to be made in the future. And so we are looking forward to keep working on it. 

Ellen: That’s awesome. Thank you so much. So thank you to our guest Danielle Manley. I really enjoyed this conversation. The resources from today’s episode that we mentioned will be linked in the description.

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