4. ENERGY EFFICIENCY: The U.N. tries to prune its electric bill (ClimateWire, 07/31/2008)

Nathanial Gronewold, ClimateWire reporter

UNITED NATIONS -- Taking a cue from Japan, South Korea and other governments, the United Nations this week will launch an experiment in climate action that it hopes will encourage others to follow suit, and perhaps add impetus to ongoing international treaty talks that have so far shown no tangible results.

Beginning on Friday and continuing for the entire month of August, U.N. headquarters in New York City will set its thermostats higher and drastically cut back on energy consumption over the weekends, when building occupancy plummets. Officials believe that the trial run of the new "Cool U.N." initiative will shave about $100,000 off that month's energy bill and reduce the campus's greenhouse gas emissions by a substantial amount.

"We have to do our share, and this is part of our responsibility, and we can show that we can come up with part of the solution," said Janos Pasztor, director of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's climate change support team, in a briefing to announce the experiment.

But a "Cool U.N." won't necessarily be cool. When U.N. workers enter the steel and glass office tower on the banks of the East River in midtown Manhattan this Friday, they will likely notice that the temperature is a bit warmer. Michael Adlerstein, executive director of the United Nations' capital master plan and head of building maintenance issues, announced to reporters and staff Wednesday that the thermostat for all office portions of the U.N. buildings would be raised by 5 degrees Fahrenheit, to 77 degrees, from where they are currently set at 72 degrees.

The temperature in the conference rooms, which already heat up when diplomats from throughout the world engage in sometimes contentious negotiations, will rise from 70 degrees to 75 degrees.

To help people cope, U.N. workers and national delegations will be encouraged to shed their suit jackets and other bulky clothing in favor of lighter, more casual dress. The secretary-general himself said that he would don more casual attire starting next month, to set an example for his staff. The campaign echoes that of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who raised summer thermostats in government office buildings and sparked a broader trend that dramatically lowered Tokyo's electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

On top of adjusting their thermostats upward, U.N. officials say they will also completely shut down the buildings' heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems over the weekends. Only critical infrastructure, like the world body's data centers, will continue to be served.

Thermostats set up in the summer, down in the winter

"This initiative will save approximately 4,400 million pounds of steam during the month of August, which is equivalent to 300 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions," Adlerstein said. "This equals approximately a 10 percent reduction in our energy consumption for August for the air conditioning systems."

The experiment will be limited to U.N. headquarters in New York and will not extend to other overseas facilities like the campuses in Nairobi, Kenya, and Geneva. But all U.N. properties worldwide have been called upon to come up with their own strategies for reducing the energy consumption and carbon footprint of their operations.

"The climatic conditions and the air conditioning, heating systems are very different in different headquarter locations," Pasztor explained. "For example, in Nairobi, there is no air conditioning at all in the buildings. In Geneva, only a few places require air conditioning."

But if the campaign in New York proves successful, with little backlash from staff or diplomats and no major technical complications, then Secretary-General Ban will likely order the program extended. In winter months, the initiative would be reversed, with thermostat settings being lowered by 5 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, winter energy savings would likely outstrip the cost benefit from the summertime steps, Adlerstein said.

"The environmental benefit of the campaign on a year-round basis would result in the reduction of emissions into the atmosphere of approximately 2,800 tons of carbon dioxide," he said.

And if the program were extended for the rest of the year, the United Nations' building maintenance office believes, the institution could cut its electricity bill by $1 million for 2008. Currently, New York's utility giant, Consolidated Edison, charges the United Nations about $13 million a year for steam and electricity, according to the Capital Master Plan (CMP) office.

Much heavier face-lifting to come

Last December, the U.N. General Assembly gave final approval to the CMP, an almost $2 billion renovation of headquarters that has been mired in planning stages for nearly 10 years.

Last month officials broke ground on the first phase of the project, the construction of a temporary home for the General Assembly and other U.N. conferences and negotiating sessions on the North Lawn of the campus. Over the next several months, staff will be moved out to office space nearby, and the iconic structure will eventually be gutted and refitted with modern equipment and materials over the five years the project is estimated to take.

As part of the renovation, CMP planners have $27.1 million to use for innovative green building options. Some of the ideas in the works include solar photovoltaics and some demonstration wind power generation, green roofs on some buildings and water catchments to store and use rainwater for landscaping and sanitation.

Currently, the aging structures, initially put up in the early 1950s, suffer a host of environmental problems. Poor exterior materials and insulation causes the glass Secretariat tower to leak large quantities of heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. The buildings are riddled with asbestos, and aging transformers and other equipment are considered health hazards.

Officials had initially assumed that the modernization would garner energy savings of as much as 40 percent and meet the equivalent of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver rating for an existing structure. But now the CMP office believes it will do even better than this.

"We now feel that we will do better than the 40 percent in energy reduction that we discussed in the winter ... [and] better than 30 percent reduction in water," Adlerstein said. The CMP office also believes that the green building improvements to U.N. headquarters will achieve the equivalent of a LEED Gold ranking, he said.

This fall, CMP officials will spell out in detail their plans for eco-friendly enhancements in a scheduled report to the General Assembly. There are growing fears that rising prices for construction materials will eventually put the entire effort significantly over budget, although the United Nations would still be slated to save millions of dollars from greater energy efficiency over the long term.

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