By Molly Slothower
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| Central control for heating and cooling consists of “summer” and “winter” settings, making finer temperature changes a complicated process. (Photo by Molly Slothower) |
The unique challenge of what is being called the Capital Master Plan lies in meeting both the strict international standards of historic building preservation, and the Gold certification for green building of the United States Green Building Council—not to mention making the buildings blast-resistant.
“I don’t think there has been another project like this…in the sense of taking a 20th century iconic building and both restoring it and also making it very green,” Alderstein told MediaGlobal.
Building emissions make up the single largest share—almost 40 percent—of the world’s greenhouse gasses, producing more climate-changing emissions than even the notoriously dirty transportation and manufacturing industries. About 80 percent of that energy is used in day-to-day operations, such as heating, cooling, and ventilation.
The UNHQ currently runs up a roughly US $14 million annual bill for electricity and steam. But when the renovations are finished, energy consumption will be halved in the four buildings that make up the UN campus, and the energy used for heating and cooling the buildings will be cut by at least 65 percent.
Quite a few of the environmental improvements in the plan have been made since the General Assembly approved the US $1.876 billion budget in 2007, but because many of the changes are substitutions rather than overall additions, the projected cost of the renovation plan has remained close to the allotted budget.
The upgrade will be in large part a matter of updating the original systems that still heat, cool, light, ventilate, and water the building, which were state-of-the-art when the compound was made in 1952.
Many of the more than half-century old central temperature controls currently only have two settings: summer and winter. When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided that the UNHQ should set an example by easing up on the air-conditioning in the summer by a few degrees, maintenance workers found themselves in a bind. Workers had to walk around the buildings with thermometers and wrenches to reset all of the dials, Werner Schmidt, public information officer of the Capital Master Plan, told MediaGlobal.
Soon, such a temperature adjustment will simply require a computer command—the new hybrid-electric chiller configuration and its high-efficiency heating counterpart will be automated.
Many of the energy-saving touches in the Plan were incorporated in the name of “walking the green walk,” to showcase the UN’s commitment to leading the world in the fight for climate change. These include low-flow toilets, rainwater collection to water the lawn and provide toilet water for the lower levels of the compound, and occupancy sensors to turn the lights off when there is no one in a room.
There will also be solar panels and possibly wind turbines, but these will be largely for display, as the location and the buildings’ orientation and very limited roof space mean little wind and sunlight can be collected.
The glass walls on the East and West fronts of the striking, 39-story Secretariat tower are in for a major environmental face-lift. Heavy-duty double-paned insulated glass that can withstand a high degree blast will replace the flimsy window panes, and automated blinds will be installed that will rise and lower depending on the degree of sunlight to keep heat out in the summer and in during the winter. The lights, which will soon have high-efficiency bulbs, will be automatically brightened or dimmed to adjust for the level of natural lighting, reducing the energy used to light the buildings.
The original single-paned windows that make up the walls of the building are so thin that fingers pressed on the inside and outside of a window-pane appear to be completely touching. Rumor has it that when it snows, heat escapes so freely that there is a no-snow zone within several feet of windows.
And the very antiquated air-conditioning system cannot adjust to accommodate the lack of insulation on the respectively sunrise- and sunset-exposed glass walls, meaning that one side is too hot in the morning and the other too hot in the afternoon.
Some innovations were specially designed to address the organization’s unusual needs. For example, the UN’s many cavernous conference chambers require massive amounts of lighting, enough to ensure that participants sitting anywhere in each of its larger rooms are brightly illuminated for video-taping purposes. The bright lights produce a lot of heat, so the huge spaces must all be intensely air-conditioned. This system will undergo a series of changes that, working together, will forge an efficient operation.
“We are buying much more sophisticated cameras that will allow us to lower the level of lighting and still capture images appropriately for high-definition television. Reducing the lighting requires less air conditioning,” said Alderstein.
The new floor-level air conditioning will make use of the principle that hot air rises and cool air sinks to heat only the bottom six to seven feet of each conference room, rather than cooling the full height of the enormous rooms.
“With the combination of the better cameras, lesser lighting, and reduced air conditioning, we will have saved a tremendous amount of energy in all of the conference rooms,” Alderstein explained. Since the high number of people and the lighting in the bigger rooms require air conditioning year round, the savings add up.
But according to Alderstein, the biggest environmental move in the plan is the re-use of the building itself.
“The step that people are not widely taking in green building is the step that we are taking, which is recycling the building. Which is sort of the greenest thing that one can do.”