帝国大厦Turns to 100% Green Power

The帝国大厦, the focus of the largest green retrofit project in the U.S., has achieved another sustainability first: The iconic New York City high-rise has become biggest commercial purchaser of green power in town.

Malkin Holdings, the firm that supervises the landmark building, has signed a two-year contract with绿山能量for wind power renewable energy certificates. The purchase from Green Mountain's corporate parent,NRG能量, will cover 100 percent of the electricity used at the 2.85-million-square-foot Empire State Building -- an arrangement that amounts to the equivalent of about 55 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy annually and will avoid almost 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year, the parties announced this morning.

绿山能量CEO Paul Thomas, Malkin Holdings President Anthony E. Malkin and NRG President and CEO David Crane (pictured left to right in the inset photo) flipped a symbolic switch to commemorate the arrangement that began Monday, the first business day of the new year.

Green Mountain's contract with the Empire State Building grew out of a desire to get the best energy deal for the property -- rather than a specific search for green power, said Malkin, who was joined by Thomas and Crane in a phone interview withgreenbiz.comtoday.

"Everything that we're doing at the Empire State Building is about business and, bottom line, that's the first and most important thing," said Malkin. "We're not about paying more to do something qualitatively different, we're about market-ready solutions. We didn't know we were doing green power until the bid was won by Green Mountain."

绿山的出现随着获胜的投标人支持帝国大厦所有者的努力，使其成为showcase of energy efficiency,demonstrate that sustainability is good business and vice versa -- and develop a model for other large commercial buildings to do the same.

In April 2009, Malkin, former president Bill Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a roughly two-year, $20-million retrofit that's designed to reduce energy consumption by 38 percent and cut energy costs by $4.4 million a year in the process.

Malkin brought together克林顿气候倡议,琼斯·朗·拉萨尔（Jones Lang LaSalle）,Johnson Controls和Rocky Mountain Instituteas partners in the project that haseight major components。其中之一是，该公司的严重材料的6,514个双吊窗的改造已于去年9月完成，成为了引人注目的展示的核心at the Greenbuild conventiontwo months later.

The project partners have made their modeling, analysis and other materialavailable to the publicto encourage other commercial property owners to pursue similar efforts.

Executives at Green Mountain and NRG, which acquired Green Mountain for $350 million in cash last September, want their work with the Empire State Building also to serve as an example to property owners.

"There is a widespread misconception that renewable energy means high costs," said Green Mountain's Thomas. "I hope this helps people understand that renewable energy can be brought to market at competitive prices."

The contract with the Empire State Building is the latest boost for Green Mountain's presence in New York. The 13-year-old company came to New York City in November 2009 and has made inroads among commercial and residential customers. Its high-profile customers in NYC include the Trump SoHo hotel, the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Archstone Apartments.

Crane at NRG said his company has found that "if you have a convenient product that is competitively priced and you offer the consumer an opportunity to make a difference, they've choosen that convenient product every time."

马尔金说：“我对建筑物中分销面板的东西不可知。”“就我而言，关键是我们在这里提供的绝对是市场。清洁能源赢得了针对所有其他形式的权力的合同，并希望能引起公众的关注。”

More information about the Empire State Building and its sustainability effort is available atwww.esbnyc.com/sustainability_energy_efficiency.asp

^{Top image courtesy of W&H Properties and inset courtesy of the Empire State Building Company, both supervised by Malkin Holdings.}