--- title: The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? | TIME description: Energy usage by large, old buildings like the Empire State Building represents a huge obstacle to cities’ dreams of carbon neutrality. New York City’s buildings account for 70% of its carbon emissions, for example, and half of those emissions are produced by the largest 5% of its structures. But retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient represents a formidable challenge, both from an engineering perspective and in terms of convincing owners that doing so is in their financial interest. canonical: https://time.com/video/ydQhS316/ og:title: The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? og:description: Energy usage by large, old buildings like the Empire State Building represents a huge obstacle to cities’ dreams of carbon neutrality. New York City’s buildings account for 70% of its carbon emissions, for example, and half of those emissions are produced by the largest 5% of its structures. But retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient represents a formidable challenge, both from an engineering perspective and in terms of convincing owners that doing so is in their financial interest. og:url: https://time.com/video/ydQhS316/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ydQhS316/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? twitter:description: Energy usage by large, old buildings like the Empire State Building represents a huge obstacle to cities’ dreams of carbon neutrality. New York City’s buildings account for 70% of its carbon emissions, for example, and half of those emissions are produced by the largest 5% of its structures. But retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient represents a formidable challenge, both from an engineering perspective and in terms of convincing owners that doing so is in their financial interest. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ydQhS316/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? [Watch (HLS stream): The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ydQhS316.m3u8) (5:51)  _Published 2021-05-10. Energy usage by large, old buildings like the Empire State Building represents a huge obstacle to cities’ dreams of carbon neutrality. New York City’s buildings account for 70% of its carbon emissions, for example, and half of those emissions are produced by the largest 5% of its structures. But retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient represents a formidable challenge, both from an engineering perspective and in terms of convincing owners that doing so is in their financial interest._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:15 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Secretary Jennifer Granholm on the Department of Energy's Plan to Decarbonize Buildings](/video/NqpAFZwl/) ### Secretary Jennifer Granholm on the Department of Energy's Plan to Decarbonize Buildings [Man Arrested After Wielding Sword on the Empire State Building's Observation Deck](/video/Qr7GHHZq/) ### Man Arrested After Wielding Sword on the Empire State Building's Observation Deck [CNN Is Lighting Up the Empire State Building With an Election Tracker](/video/0YNqhpSI/) ### CNN Is Lighting Up the Empire State Building With an Election Tracker --- ## Transcript One of the tallest buildings in the world are iconic and symbolic for both the cities in the countries where they're being built. the energy of the Roaring Twenties is manifested in the Empire State Building the representation of not just the city of New York, but the whole country as a whole buildings are responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gas emissions in New York state. And we have millions of old building retrofitting existing buildings is probably one of our most formidable, climate challenges for icons of urban life are at the center of policies to slow climate change in 2019. New York City, enacted, local on 97. Which place is carbon caps on most large buildings within years. The city will find buildings for exceeding. Those caps in at the state level lawmakers are hoping to make New York, a leader in large-scale retrofitting. 90 year old Empire State Building provides a template for environmentally conscious Renovations. That's the one that people are looking at and what did they do, and how are they measuring themselves against that building? In 2010, the Empire State Building completed the first phase of an extensive retrofit within a decade. The retrofit /. The building's energy usage by more than 40% and its save the high-rise more than four million dollars each year. We moved to a Program to reposition the building in a dynamic way as a leader in Energy. Efficiency building health and indoor Environmental Quality is way to differentiate to attract better 10 better credits longer lease terms. There's no Silver Bullet. It's silver, Buckshot, it's lots of different pieces that work together. Return, a tremendous amount of work with our tenants to do things, like lower the energy used to just go see what the lady equipment, heating ventilation and air conditioning. One of the things that we did was to retrofit all of the windows in the building of 6514 windows, we were used over 96% of the existing materials, be added of heinous suspended coated film which manages he came in the summer and heat loss in the winter the added insulation behind Oliver. Radiators we have created the entire Central which is a chiller plant. Reused the shells of these giant machines and we got it done and rebuild them on site. We decided to replace our elevators with the destination, dispatch type of system, which actually uses regenerative braking instead of just friction breaking the generates heat. It generates electricity, There is no shortcut. You have to look at all the systems in a building, and you have to look at the behavior of the human beings that occupy that building these are lessons that we learned that not everyone was yet, you know? We, we intend to inform policy or successful practice and also help other building owners to get to the point where we are and hopefully to get some wipes, the Empire State Building did a decade ago was pioneering, and really lead a Green Building movement and this needs to continue. And we actually need to even go further and deeper. We think about all the buildings we need to retrofit the, the big ones, and the small ones we need to be retrofitting 200 buildings a day every day for the next twelve thousand days. The magnitude of the transformation that we need in our economy, really does require action at every level of government. Are goals in the state or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 40% by 2030 and 85% by mid-century. the Empire Building Challenge is a first-of-a-kind, public-private partnership to make New York, a global hub for low-carbon and environmentally Sustainable Building Solutions, we selected 10 Partners who we will work through in this public-private partnership to demonstrate low-carbon Technologies, low carbon Solutions in high-rise buildings through these early demonstrations, we will start to learn more about how a building owner Ken decarbonise a high rise building, We will only be successful if we actually show that those low carbon Solutions, whether it's low-carbon buildings or carbon-free power grid that that is a better system for people that's better that create Economic Opportunity and it's a better system that other entities want to replicate whether it's throughout the country whether it's throughout the globe but that's the transformation that that we need. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. 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