Charging the Battery: Energy Efficiency in Battery Park City

摘要

Battery Park City (BPC) is a 92-acre neighborhood in New York City's lower Manhattan,which has been developed over the past few decades by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA),a public benefit corporation established in 1968 to develop the site. In the late 1990s, BPCAcommitted that all future buildings built on the remaining undeveloped parcels would need tomeet "Green Guidelines," and published leading edge Environmental Guidelines. These GreenGuidelines represent an ambitious effort to ensure environmentally responsible construction on alarge scale in a high density urban context. By encouraging developers to strive for "green" or"sustainable design", the BPCA Green Guidelines establish BPC as a premier community withenvironmentally friendly places to live and work in urban environments. The first buildingconstructed to meet the Green Guidelines, a 27 story apartment building, was completed in 2003.The BPCA has also begun work on development and implementation of a sustainableenergy master plan for the entire community with the objectives of reducing energy use andassociated environmental impacts, maximizing the efficiency of the community's energysystems, and improving system reliability. This effort, with a crucial community educationcomponent, involves working with building managers and tenants in the existing commercial andresidential buildings in BPC to identify and implement energy savings and clean distributedgeneration opportunities. This paper reviews the development and implementation of the GreenGuidelines, and progress toward improving the energy efficiency of BPC's existing buildings.