海角视频

345 Hudson

New York, NY, USA

In response to New York City鈥檚 aggressive climate legislation (LL97) that was passed in 2019, Hudson Square Partnership (HSP) and its partners developed a carbon neutrality roadmap for 345 Hudson Street (345H).

The proposed retrofit approach by the Hudson Square Properties (HSP) team will shift the building to electric and significantly reduce energy demand through an innovative, replicable, flexible, scalable, and secure approach that will create profitability for the tenants and landlords, improved health and well-being in the building and positive social impact.

海角视频 supported HSP and Urbs | Urban Systems to develop a solution to decarbonize 345 Hudson. 海角视频鈥檚 support led to HSP winning the Empire Building Challenge prize of $5 million.

Collectively, HSP has 130 million ft2 of commercial buildings in New York City to be transformed to low carbon real estate

Post-retrofit design is expected to see peak heating and cooling loads fall dramatically鈥攂y 92% and 63% respectively

345 Hudson exceeded the Empire Building Challenge鈥檚 key objectives: significantly reducing building Energy Use Intensity (EUI), removing on-site fossil fuel combustion, producing a low-cost, high-value, replicable solution, engaging leading international solutions providers, and eliminating market barriers

Challenge

Retrofitting an existing building, let alone an entire portfolio of buildings towards renewable systems comes with many technological challenges and risks, not to mention the upfront financial concerns often associated with decarbonizing existing buildings.

Cold climates seem to add more perceived barriers to adopting renewable heat technology. There is also a need to meet tenant needs 鈥� allowing for air circulation, comfortable temperatures and humidities throughout the year, etc. This needs to be balanced by not giving tenants too much burden in reducing their own operating footprint within their rented space.  Instead, choosing renewables should be an easy, built-in choice for tenants in rented spaces.

Solution

HSP offers a model that is new to the U.S. market but one that has been tried and tested in Nordic regions 鈥� saving both energy and long-term operating costs. It enables building areas to exchange and share heat, between individual floors, different floors, and notably even between otherwise distinct buildings.

This has the potential to significantly enhance the overall efficiency of buildings and reduce carbon intensity. In fact, there has been a 70% reported reduction in carbon emissions in the Nordic buildings sector since the adoption of this model.

It also ensures that building owners provide efficient equipment for their tenants to operate, and control based on need. For 345 Hudson this means a water-based thermal network that can operate between building floors and between buildings through rooftop thermal storage, allowing heat and cooling to be recovered, stored, and recycled using heat pumps.

This allows building systems to be seen beyond individual building footprints and in a truly integrated, district-scale manner. 

Value

The design approach divides the building into three distinct 鈥榮ystem boundaries鈥� 鈥� SB 1: Energy Supplied to a Space or Tenant Space Options; SB 2: Tenant/Floor Equipment or Installing best-in-class equipment and SB 3: Building Infrastructure or Creating an energy exchange. By dissecting the energy infrastructure with the system boundaries, we have been able to identify the weakest link within the existing system. The linear energy supply system is dependent on the building infrastructure which takes in the energy supply (SB2) to meet the indoor comfort (i.e., temperature and humidity) needs.

Three distinct retrofit options were provided to tenants to allow them to select a heating and cooling system they are most comfortable with. These alternatives will be supported by a heat pump with a two-stage compressor unit with constant operation, produces cooling and heat depending on the demand and the addition of DOAS on each floor to provide 100% fresh air with heat recovery efficiency of up to 95% and equipped with indirect evaporative cooling exchanger. These systems will then be supported by dry coolers (replacing the cooling towers) that are supported by an efficient heat pump with double circuits and twin compressors. The central heat pump working with the floor level heat pump will allow the condenser water loop to be turned into an energy carrier and an exchange. With water as the medium at optimal temperatures while allowing waste heat from the floor to become an energy source for the other, we call it an 鈥楢mbient Loop鈥� and the exchange as an 鈥楨nergy Arbitrage鈥�.

The project aligned with an insurer to begin to develop an insurance policy that will significantly reduce and/or eliminate the designer and contractor鈥檚 risks in decarbonization. The goal was to create an insurance mechanism to support the scaling and replicating of the energy efficiency solutions that will contribute to significant carbon emissions reductions and help real estate owners meet Local Law 97 requirements.

Savings – Our preferred path for 345H is designed to have 62.6% EUI savings, 54.3% peak demand savings, 98.3% carbon emissions savings, and 89.5% fossil fuels savings, resulting in $1,052,468 in annually savings and zero operating expense.

Flexibility of options 鈥� providing tenants with options for their space reduces the chance of the easiest, standard and cheapest option being selected by tenant engineers and contractors.

Information and data transparency 鈥� tenant fit-out documentation and open-source models are provided to tenant design and engineering teams saving time and effort; automated and secure data will allow transparency across landlord/tenant relationships (and even tenant to tenant staff relationships).

Communication of goals 鈥� A strategy was created for brokers to provide the goals of the Hudson Square Partnership to potential tenants. This will ensure that the tenants understand the benefits of the space and help attract tenants that share similar values.

Sharing the benefits 鈥� tenants can take part in the benefits of the proposed measures at no additional cost; the efficiency upgrades themselves result in lowered energy costs. Emission savings and the AI and data proposition will also allow transparency and monetization of data for financial and ESG benefit to the tenants.