New York City is trading its signature glass-dominated skyline for one replete with plants, solar panels, and wind turbines. The day before Earth Day, the New York City Council passed a historic act that will turn the city green, literally. On Monday, April 22, the city council approved the Climate Mobilization Act, a package of bills and resolutions designed to drastically improve the energy efficiency of New York City. Buildings are front and center to this "New Green Deal" for New York, with green roofs taking the spotlight. Following in the footsteps of Toronto, San Francisco, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, all new residential and commercial buildings in the city must top roofs with either plants, solar panels, mini wind turbines—or a combination of all three.
The Javits Center's impressive green roof is roughly the size of five football fields.
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"Today, we are passing a bill that won’t just make our skyline prettier—it will also improve the quality of life for New Yorkers for generations to come," said Rafael Espinal, the NYC Council member who sponsored the bill. "We’ve already seen the revolutionary benefits of green roofs in action thanks to places around the city like Brooklyn Steel, the Barclays Center, the Javits Center, the USPS Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, and many others," he continued. "They cool down cities by mitigating the urban heat island effect, cut energy costs, absorb air pollution, reduce stormwater runoff, promote biodiversity, provide soundproofing, and make our cities more livable for all." The bill covers all new buildings, as well as those undergoing certain major renovations. An accompanying bill adjusts requirements for smaller buildings and looks at ways of phasing in the change to avoid negatively impacting homeowners and small business owners.
Changing the material on a roof may seem like a small step, but the impact can be impressive. Vegetated green roofs reduce the urban heat island effect, as the plants absorb light that would otherwise become heat energy. By mitigating heat gain, green roofs can help reduce demand on power plants and even reduce energy use inside buildings. Research published by the National Research Council of Canada found that an extensive green roof can cut a building's daily energy demand for air conditioning by 75 percent. Plus, they look lovely.
More efficient buildings are at the heart of the Climate Mobilization Act, which recognizes that NYC's buildings are the number one contributor of carbon emissions in the city. 50,000 buildings over 25,000 square feet—just two percent of the city's total buildings—contribute half of all building-related carbon emissions.
A closer look at the Javits Center's green roof.
rajasekarcmr on April 25th, 2019 at 12:50 UTC »
Mini wind turbines ?? Is there any building that already has it ?? Just curious how it looks.
Edit:
Thanks for all the replies. I have seen an building online like petronas but instead of bridge it had an HAWT one in between. Haven’t seen mini VAWT. Thanks for the pics again.
w0wieee on April 25th, 2019 at 12:47 UTC »
to put it in perspective how much light and heat gets reflected from a white roof
I worked on a roof in the city for two days setting up antennas. It was late September and I was advised to put on sunblock. I did, everywhere. Got burned on the inside of my nose
having plants or solar that absorb that sunlight and make use out of it seems to have potential
edit: Hijacking my own comment to push some cool stuff I learned in the comments to the top (please do not grill me about being partially right on a technicality, this is a general summary. If something is painfully incorrect please let me know and I will fix it :)
One goal is to reduce the urban island effect, or in other words, to cool the "concrete jungle" because concrete and other building structures absorb light and heat up. An attempt to do this was by reflecting light using things like white roofs but since reflections are not ideal they scatter and are absorbed by other structures and heat them up - and particularly infrared wavelengths can so be trapped by green house gasses after being reflected. Another goal is to harness that light into reusable energy instead of reflecting it (wind and solar panels)
You might be asking "but if absorbing light causes materials to heat up, how will solar panels and plants help?"
Light is made up of photons, and when a photon collides with an electron (all materials have electrons) sometimes the electron gets more energy and is ”freed" and pushed to a higher energy orbit, this is called the photoelectic effect. At this point the electron is chillin in the higher orbit and it can either be harvested as energy (solar panels or photosynthesis) or it can fall back into its old orbit and emit all the extra energy it gained from light, as heat (or light again depending on material) Harvesting the electrons as energy before they emit heat can produce less heat and produce more "free energy" that were generated cleanlydozernaps on April 25th, 2019 at 12:28 UTC »
If I had the money to build an entire building in NYFC I’d sure as shit put up all 3.
Good for marketing, tax breaks, oasis for tenants, reduce ongoing energy costs.
Now where did I put that lotto ticket...