Executive Summary

In September 2014, Mayor de Blasio announced that New York City would continue its leading role in addressing climate change by committing to reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) 80 percent by 2050 (80x50). Since then, the City and numerous other stakeholders have done a tremendous amount of work to understand paths to achieve the deep carbon emissions reductions that scientists advise are necessary to limit global temperature rise to less than 2°C. The work to date culminated in the City’s Roadmap to 80x50, released in September 2016. Because the City’s more than one million buildings cover more than five billion square feet and are responsible for 68% of citywide GHG emissions [1], dramatic changes to building energy systems and operations will be needed to reach the target. The analyses make clear that the pathways to attain 80% carbon reduction will require substantial changes in how buildings use energy.

The Roadmap presents an audacious target, aimed at driving major changes to the way buildings use energy, particularly in heating. The technical analysis and comprehensive approach highlighted in the Roadmap are demonstrations of NYC’s global leadership, and in many ways, the Roadmap demonstrates a plausible path to achieve 80x50. In fact, the proposed approach is a compelling demonstration that existing, proven technologies can get us to 80x50.

However, despite the technical rigor of the Roadmap and the Technical Working Group Report, much less analysis has been presentedon the economic, policy, and implementation hurdles of the proposed strategies. The effectiveness of policy activity to improve buildings’ energy and emissions performance has been somewhat mixed, and building performance has not improved as rapidly as projected in earlier analyses. Achieving the target will require a mix of regulations, incentives, public support, and other activities to drive innovation and change more quickly than the historic rate of change for building systems. Significant investment and cost burdens will be required among a broad variety of stakeholders, and developing a methodology to fairly distribute the burden of effort and cost must be part of future planning processes.

The City’s 80x50 target is very ambitious and has stimulated great interest in finding innovative and pragmatic ways to move toward the imperative of dramatically reduced emissions. This paper identifies hurdles that need addi - tional attention – but 2050 is still a long way off. The 33 years between now and 2050 will allow for investment and innovation across sectors that will help us realize this goal, and many stakeholders are motivated to rise to the challenge. Considering the global imperative to solve 80x50, leadership is needed to convene the broadest possible group of stakeholders and experts to build not just a roadmap, but the road itself.

Progress to Date

In September 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would continue its leading role in addressing climate change by committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050 (80 x 50). At the time, the commitment made New York the world’s largest city to commit to this ambitious target. Since then, the City and numerous other stakeholders have done a tremendous amount of work to understand paths to achieve the deep carbon emissions reductions that scientists advise are necessary to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celcius. The work culminated in the City’s Roadmap to 80x50, released in September 2016.

Despite the many challenges that remain, the Roadmap has been an important step toward formulating actions that the City must take to achieve the 80 x 50 goal. Because the City’s more than one million buildings cover more than five billion square feet and are responsible for 68% of citywide greenhouse gas emissions, dramatic changes to building energy systems and operations will be needed to reach the target. The analyses make clear that the pathways to attain 80% carbon reduction will require substantial changes in how buildings use energy, especially for heating and hot water.

For the buildings sector, the Roadmap relied on a thorough, two-year technical analysis conducted by a Technical Working Group (TWG) assembled by the City. With the availability of substantial data collected through the City’s Greener, Greater Buildings Plan—including annual benchmarking, reporting of energy and water use, and required energy audits in all large buildings—and the rich detail included in the City’s annual greenhouse gas inventories, the TWG was able to develop an extremely detailed picture of current building energy use and emissions and pathways to dramatically reduce those emissions.  In April 2016, the TWG published its detailed findings about how New York City buildings consume energy in the report Transforming NYC Buildings for a Low-Carbon Future [2]. The work of the TWG was integrated with analysis on energy supply, transportation, and waste in the Roadmap [3].

The data make clear that the pathways to attain 80% carbon reduction will require substantial changes in how buildings use energy, especially for heating and hot water. The Roadmap sets an interim target of 40% GHG reduction by 2030 (a significant increase from the then-ambitious 2007 target of 30% reduction by 2030). The approach proposed in the buildings section of the Roadmap is summarized in Figure 1 and includes the following:

1)    A mix of current laws and initiatives that are expected to achieve the first 23% of carbon reduction. This includes the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, voluntary Carbon Challenges in a variety of sectors, and new initiatives identified through the de Blasio administration’s One City: Built to Last planning process.

2)    Full implementation of TWG-identified cost-saving Energy Conservation Measures  in existing buildings, along with significantly more stringent energy codes for all new construction and major renovation. These changes are projected to create greenhouse gas emissions reductions of an additional 17%, getting to a 40% overall reduction.

3)    Major shifts in the electricity generation mix throughout the region, including utility-scale solar and wind developments. These shifts, along with accompanying energy storage investments, are forecasted to bring emissions down another 18% to around 58% overall for the buildings sector and are derived from New York State’s Clean Energy Standard [4] commitment.

4)    A shift from natural gas heating and hot water to electric-driven heat pumps for space and hot water heating in a majority of residential buildings. If this conversion and the targets for a low-carbon electric grid are simultaneously achieved, then this fuel switch would reduce building sector emissions another 22%, which would reach the 80% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.

Figure 1: Simplified summary of approach to achieving 80% reductions as presented in the Roadmap

Roadblocks in the Roadmap

The technical analysis and comprehensive approach in the Roadmap is a demonstration of NYC’s global leadership, and the 33 years to 2050 allow time for change and innovation. Only a handful of cities in the world have a document as detailed and thoughtful as the Roadmap. However, the buildings chapter is primarily a technical feasibility study rather than an implementation plan since economic and practical challenges were not presented with the same depth of analysis as the technical issues. Achieving the Roadmap targets will require capital investments above simple equipment replacement investments, particularly in the heating and hot water systems of a majority of the city’s residential buildings, which with current energy prices are not cost-effective based on either up-front costs or annual operating energy costs. Even with a dramatic shift from fossil fuels to electric heat pumps for space and water heating, realizing the emissions reductions goal is dependent on an unprecedented shift to dramatically lower carbon electricity. This shift must also take place as the biggest current source of zero-carbon electricity in the region, the Indian Point nuclear plant, is scheduled to close. This paper seeks to discuss the implementation challenges and possible solutions to induce the unprecedented changes to the building and real estate industry needed to achieve the 80x50 goals.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions to Date: Mixed Results

The Roadmap states that with full implementation of current initiatives, the City is on track to achieve the interim target of 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2030 (40 x 30). However, the effectiveness of new policies in improving buildings’ energy and emissions performance has been somewhat mixed, and building performance has not improved as rapidly as projected in earlier analyses. According to the Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2015 (released in April 2017), citywide emissions were 14.8% lower than in 2005, a trend that could lead to the 40 x 30 target if extrapolated to 2030. However, after fairly steep improvements in the first years after 2005 [5], building sector emissions have leveled off and were actually higher in 2013, 2014, and 2015 than in 2012.

Virtually all of the greenhouse gas reductions to date in the buildings sector are from lower carbon intensity in the electricity supply and fuel switching from oil to natural gas.  These changes have resulted in lower-carbon production of electricity and heating. While cleaner electricity and steam supply improvements have cut the emissions from buildings, on-site building energy consumption in New York City continues to rise. According to the City’s 2015 emissions inventory, while some of the increase in the previous two years was due to growth in the building stock, city buildings are also seeing increased emissions in “per building area heating,” which more than offsets the savings in the “per building area electricity” emissions [6].

 Current policies at the city, state and federal levels are having substantial impacts on GHG emissions from some building end uses, while other consumer trends are driving up energy consumption. Building lighting energy use has been declining due to compact fluorescent lamps, LED lamps, and automated controls.

Space heating loads are trending down due to tighter envelopes and boiler/distribution efficiencies. However, air-conditioning and ventilation loads are trending up due to consumer demand for cooling and fresh air, increased residential ventilation rates due to new codes, increased IT and data cooling requirements, and the trend toward highly glazed buildings. A plethora of new and larger electronic devices in residences, and more plug loads in offices, are also pushing up electricity consumption and offsetting other efficiency gains.

While NYC buildings as a whole are not showing reduced energy consumption, larger buildings (over 50,000 square feet), which are subject to the 2009 Greener, Greater Buildings laws, are showing a more promising trend. Detailed analysis of annual benchmarking data from 2011 through 2013 shows that energy use decreased by 6% and emissions decreased by 8% in this segment of the market that participated in the City’s building energy benchmarking program [7].

Additionally, there is strong progress with demonstration projects of “Passive House” development in NYC, which sets very low energy use requirements. Currently, the largest Passive House structure in the world is nearing completion as part of the Roosevelt Island Cornell Tech campus. Passive House and other market development activities show promise for new construction and retrofits of the massive existing building stock [8].

Outstanding Technical Issues to Study

In many ways, the Roadmap demonstrates a plausible path to achieve 80 x 50. There were no proposals that require a completely new technical invention that does not currently exist, nor have dramatic improvements in equipment efficiency been relied upon to meet emissions reduction targets. In fact, the proposed approach is a compelling demonstration that proven technologies exist today that can technically get us to 80 x 50. Based on discussions with a variety of stakeholders, few of the proposed strategies might be called into doubt on the basis of technical feasibility. The expansive data set of New York’s building stock and energy use is far from perfect, but it is a resource that few other cities have.

A fundamental insight from the technical analysis in the Roadmap is that it is not possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% without eliminating fuel oil and natural gas combustion from a large portion of the heating and hot water boilers that are common in New York City’s residential building stock. In 2014, about 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, and nearly 30% of total citywide emissions, came from fossil fuels burned in buildings, nearly all used for space heating and hot water. The Roadmap anticipates getting 50–60% of buildings to switch to electric-driven heat pumps to meet the 80% reduction target [9]. Smaller residential buildings may have fewer technical challenges for conversion to electric-driven heating, but larger residential buildings will struggle to find space for both heat pump conversion equipment as well as air-based heat sources. A few of the challenges for this monumental shift to electric-driven heating are summarized in Figure 2 along with other minor challenges identified by individuals interviewed for this paper.

Based on the analysis leading up to the Roadmap, there is little doubt that some version of the proposed technical paths could be executed by 2050 with unlimited financial resources and unlimited willingness and authority to act, though some stakeholders question the City’s authority to implement some of the potential regulations. Unfortunately, even as one of the highest per-capita income cities in the world, New York City faces the same real resource constraints that all cities face.

Figure 2: Technical challenges to specific proposals for energy-efficient technologies or strategies

Economic Hurdles

Despite the technical rigor of the Roadmap and the TWG Report, much less analysis has been presented on the economic impacts of the proposed strategies. An important next step on the path to 80x50 will be to thoroughly study impacts of up-front and operational costs to residents, city government, building owners, utilities, and others. With current market costs, implementation of the ECMs identified in the TWG analysis may not be cost-effective; energy cost savings may not offset upfront capital costs. Figure 3 below presents a brief summary of some of the proposed strategies in the Roadmap that have a combination of challenging up-front costs, operational costs, owner-tenant split incentive, or transaction costs that prevent market-driven uptake in GHG reduction strategies today.

Figure 3: Economic challenges to energy efficiency measures

Take the simple example of converting hot water heating from a natural gas water heater to a heat pump water heater. Most existing fossil fuel-fired (natural gas or oil) water heaters in New York City will reach their useful life prior to 2050, and nearly every building – large or small, residential or commercial – will face the decision on whether to switch to electric heat pump water heaters or remain with natural gas, oil, or steam-fired equipment. The proposed switch is technically straightforward, consisting of replacing an old gas water heater or boiler with either a new high efficiency gas water heater or a heat pump water heater. New gas, oil, or steam equipment currently have slightly lower up-front costs than heat pump water heaters, though that may change over time and could create an opportunity for the City or electric utilities to provide incentives for switching to electric heating. Some retrofit configurations may have spatial planning challenges as some heat pump equipment tends to be larger than steam or gas fired equipment and would need to reject heat to outdoor air. Installing new electrical circuits or condensate drains could incur subsequent costs. Figure 4 shows the basic assumptions and results of a residential hot water heater example. GHG savings would be close to 50% with the carbon intensity of the electrical grid today, and around 80% if the grid achieved the low-carbon intensity target set in the Roadmap. But annual operating costs would likely be higher; since natural gas costs are at a historic low, this simple analysis shows an energy cost increase of 38% - although this will change along with gas and electricity prices over time.

Figure 4: Example of annual energy cost and greenhouse gas emissions when considering switching from natural gas to electric heat pump hot water heating

Considering that water heating constitutes 15% of the city’s buildings-related greenhouse gas emissions, it is reasonable to assume that if most hot water heaters in New York are not converted to heat pump water heating, there is no way to reach the 80 x 50 goal [11]. Aside from minor efficiency approaches in water heating, the only strategy that results in significant greenhouse gas reductions is converting to electric-driven heat pump water heaters. The Roadmap does not address the difficulties of getting homeowners or residential building owners to make such a switch, nor how an increase in energy costs runs contrary to affordable housing goals of the City. Finding a clever solution to energy affordability should be a primary objective of any future working group analysis.

To remain an attractive place to live and do business, New York City needs to be economically competitive, and plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must fit within the City’s broader economic goals. The Roadmap did not acknowledge how its proposed strategies would impact the current housing affordability crisis. Many of the proposed strategies do make economic sense, but for those that do not—such as heating and hot water fuel switching—a broad discussion of how to share the costs of achieving 80 x 50 goals must be conducted to move the process forward. Much more analysis, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement is needed to refine the understanding of the economics of the 80 x 50 Roadmap.

Implementation Challenges

Admittedly, the Roadmap was not intended to solve the issues of how to implement its proposed strategies. Some stakeholders have raised questions about legal jurisdiction, mechanisms to induce action by City government, fair distribution of burden, and other practical concerns, which were not presented with the rigor necessary for such a complex and challenging objective. Figure 5 summarizes just a few implementation challenges discussed with various stakeholders during the research for this paper.

Figure 5: Practical or implementation challenges to specific strategies in the Roadmap

At the heart of much of the economic conundrum for the Buildings section of the Roadmap are the relative prices of electricity, natural gas, and oil. First, the prices of fossil fuels do not inherently reflect any significant externality costs for their relative impacts to climate change or their relative greenhouse emissions (though this is accounted for in electricity markets through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)). As a result, there are no inherent macroeconomic pricing signals that reflect relative greenhouse gas emissions and guide economic decisions toward greenhouse gas energy sources and away from high greenhouse gas energy sources. Second, the recent trend of low-cost natural gas results in a significant increase in operational cost when converting to electric-driven heating and hot water. Thus, the cost burden cost of this strategy will be borne by those who pay the electric bills in the buildings that convert from fossil fuels to electric heating and hot water. It is likely that many New Yorkers will pay more for heat and hot water in the short term to achieve long-term 80 x 50 goals. Considering the scale of this proposal and the number of New Yorkers impacted, an informed public conversation will be necessary to ensure broad public support for 80 x 50 goals.

Moving Forward: Levers to Drive Progress and Innovation

The 80 x 50 Roadmap sets an audacious target, designed to drive major changes in the way New York City uses energy and heats buildings. Achieving the target will require careful consideration of diverse policy levers, balancing a mix of regulations, incentives, price signals, new business models, public support, and other actions to drive innovation. Change must happen much more quickly than the historical rate of change for building systems.

Figure 6: Levers or implementation modes to induce market changes

Balancing Different Policy and Implementation Levers

The predominant implementation mode discussed to date for getting deeper GHG reductions is mandating progress through legislation or regulation. Other modes such as those presented in Figure 6 below must be more fully considered and developed to accomplish a task as complex as this one. Some have raised concerns about the bounds of the City of New York’s legal jurisdiction for mandates – these are details that need to be explored by experts. Nor was the importance of building public support or market demand for low-emission GHG buildings discussed. There was also little consideration of how to mobilize the private sector beyond the real estate community to drive rapid change in GHG reductions in the Roadmap. New York’s rich ecosystem of community groups, non-profits, tech start-ups, and financial institutions could be invaluable if motivated and coordinated to address GHG emissions and climate change.

The building design and construction industry is historically slow and resistant to change, so considering how other stakeholders might drive innovation will increase the likelihood of achieving 80x50.

Driving Innovation

While the challenges on the surface can seem overwhelming, 2050 is 32 years away, and that leaves a lot of time for disruptive innovation to bring new energy and building system technologies into widespread use. Ten to 15 years ago, who thought that driverless cars might be feasible by 2030? What does that portend for changes in buildings and energy systems by 2050? Ten years ago it would have been impossible to predict the dramatic decline in prices of LED lighting and the penetration of that technology that is rapidly replacing the incandescent lights that were standard for most of the 20th century. Similarly, electric vehicle penetration has been growing faster than predicted even three years ago, and a mix of technical, financial, and policy innovations have driven this growth.

As noted earlier, most of the technical solutions for getting to the 80 x 50 target are currently available. Without dramatic changes in price signals or other incentives, however, it is hard to see how they will be implemented as quickly as needed to achieve the goal by 2050. Achieving low carbon intensities for electricity supply also will require herculean effort to change the generation mix while maintaining reliability and affordability, especially as significant new electricity demand for space and water heating and electric vehicles grows.

Constructively balancing policy “carrots” and “sticks” will be part of the innovation challenge. In the early 1990s, new, more efficient refrigerators were demonstrated to have technical potential, but manufacturers were hesitant to make products that consumers might not want. To address this issue, a group of policy makers and utilities conceived of the “Golden Carrot” award through the Super Efficient Refrigerator program [12], which led to new products on the market, rapid market growth for the new products, and the ability for the federal government to set higher minimum efficiency standards to make the standard, lower-efficiency products illegal to buy. Similar competitions might be relevant for the New York City buildings market.

There will be a need for new types of policy-oriented collaboration to accelerate the uptake of technology and drive the kinds of integrated designs that are currently only used on pilot projects. One example of this type of integrated design and construction innovation is the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, where the core academic building is targeted to be the largest net-zero energy building in the U.S., and the residential building the tallest in the world to achieve Passive House certification [13]. In the coming years, more of these new developments need to be proven, and new business approaches to deep retrofits of existing buildings will be needed, to allow entrepreneurs to make money while cutting New York City greenhouse gas emissions.

A healthy mix of innovative technologies was discussed in the Roadmap, but some stakeholders had actually hoped to see more. Ground source heat pumps (sometimes known as “geothermal”), cogeneration (on-site electricity and heat production), district energy (microgrids, neighborhood heating or cooling systems), and advanced Lighting Controls (motion sensors, daylight controls, individual bulb control, automated shades, etc.) are all innovative building technologies that were included in the Roadmap. Considering the rate of technological change today, particularly within the realm of the Internet of Things (IoT), distributed controls and data collection, mobile device interfaces, and other changes yet to be developed, we can also anticipate additional technological advancements over the next 30 years.

It would be hard to predict the extent of influence from the technology of social media, for example, which will surely evolve dramatically over the next 30 years. The ability of social media to motivate the public to change behaviors or invest in technological innovation may also help accelerate the progress to 80x50. Interestingly, though, most recent technological change has been driven not by mandates from the public sector but by entrepreneurs uncovering latent market demand and creating new business models. There are clearly many more roles for the City to play than just the issuer of legislative mandates.

Planning how to cut building energy consumption and change the types of systems that provide space and water heating to buildings on a massive scale cannot happen without close integration with electric system planning and regulation, much of which is not led by  City government but by State regulators and the private sector. There are models of democratic policy innovations from other parts of the world that can be explored. Deliberative and co-governance policy development, where a mix of stakeholders have different types of responsibilities, holds promise for accelerating the changes that need to take place in the coming decades.

Sharing the Burden

Regardless of the rate of technological innovation, the ambitious targets of the 80 x 50 Roadmap will require significant investment by, and impose cost burdens across, a broad variety of stakeholders. Developing a methodology to fairly distribute the burden of effort and cost across stakeholders was not a part of the most recent Roadmap planning and should be be part of future planning processes. To the extent any of the groups summarized in Figure 7 feel that they have borne more than their fair share of the effort or cost to achieve the 80 x 50 goals, they likely will oppose any major new City initiatives to pursue the plans envisioned in the Roadmap. Conversations about fair distribution of cost are inextricably linked to implementation levers as well as the transparent planning process required to build consensus.

Figure 7: Stakeholder groups and potential respective burdens in achieving greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals

Need for Stakeholder Engagement

New York City has been a leader in so many societal changes in the past century—improving building safety, banning indoor smoking, promoting affordable housing, and providing urban bicycling facilities, among many others. Current City leaders have continued this tradition by leading by example and proactively planning how to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the technical work over the past decade has just laid the groundwork for the even harder work still to come over the next two decades to achieve 80 x 50.

The same depth of rigorous technical analysis that underlies the Roadmap now needs to be applied to understanding the economic, legal, and implementation challenges of the 80 x 50 plan. This analysis should include another stakeholder group, with clear ground rules for decision-making defined at the outset, to engage in a multi-year, collaborative, inclusive, and data-driven problem solving exercise to address the challenges described in this paper. Many groups and initiatives must be mobilized, motivated, and coordinated to induce the scale of greenhouse gas reduction actions needed to get to 80 x 50. The Roadmap shows us the myriad strategies to design, build, renovate, operate, and occupy buildings differently and that everyone must be involved to achieve success. And the process of gaining buy-in so all stakeholders feel they share the burden of action fairly will be as important as the product from the next working group.

Looking back over the accomplishments of the past decade, it is also clear that there is a need to iterate on plans to evolve New York’s building stock. The first set of laws and policies in the Greener, Greater Buildings Plans was a good start, and the Roadmap to 80 x 50 is an important next step. Although the Roadmap is not a definitive answer to a complex and seemingly intractable problem, it is a significant step along the long path of innovation, collaboration, and inclusive policy making that will result in achieving the 80 x 50 goals.

Conclusion

The City’s 80 x 50 target has already begun stimulating innovative and pragmatic ways to move toward the goal of dramatically reduced emissions. While this paper has identified hurdles that need additional attention, 2050 is still a long way off and many stakeholders are motivated to rise to the challenge. Considering the global imperative to reach 80 x 50 and New York City’s stature in the world, leadership is needed to convene the broadest possible group of stakeholders and experts to build not just a roadmap, but the road itself.

Endnotes

[1] New York City’s Roadmap to 80x50, September 2016 (p. 54): http://www1.nyc.gov/site/sustainability/ codes/80x50.page

[2] One City Built to Last: Transforming New York City Buildings for a Low-Carbon Future – Technical Working Group Report, April 2016: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/sustainability/downloads/pdf/publications/ TWGreport_04212016.pdf

[3] New York City’s Roadmap to 80x50, September 2016: http://www1.nyc.gov/site/sustainability/ codes/80x50.page

[4] New York Clean Energy Standard. www.nyserda.ny.gov/All-Programs/Programs/Clean-Energy-Standard

[5] Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2015, The City of New York, April 2017. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/sustainability/downloads/pdf/publications/NYC_GHG_Inventory_ 2015_FINAL.pdf

[6] Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2015, The City of New York, April 2017: Figure 12 (p. 23).

[7] New York City’s Energy and Water Use – 2013 Report (August 2016), prepared by NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, Urban Green Council, and NYU Center for Urban Science & Progress. http:// www.nyc.gov/html/gbee/downloads/pdf/nyc_energy_water_use_2013_report_final.pdf

[8] Passive House Institute US. http://www.phius.org/home-page

[9] NYC’s Roadmap to 80x50, p. 62.

[10] Assumptions: 100MMBTU annual water demand, end of life natural gas water heater efficiency: 70%, new natural gas water heater efficiency: 85%, heat pump water heater Energy Factor: 2.5 ( Heat Pump Water Heater Field Evaluation of Field Installed Performance, Study by Steven Winters Associates, 2012. http://ma-eeac.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Heat-Pump-Water-heaters- Evaluation-of-Field-INstalled-Performance.pdf), cost of natural gas: $12.50/MMBTU, cost of electricity: $0.22/kWh, grid carbon intensity 2017: 0.05 tCO2e/MMBTU, 2050: 0.035 tCO2e/MMBTU, natural gas carbon intensity: 0.082 tCO2e/MMBTU

[11] NYC’s Roadmap to 80x50, p54

[12] The Super Efficient Refrigerator Program: Case Study of a Golden Carrot Program: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/7281.pdf

[13] See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/business/energy-environment/cornells-climate-conscious- urban-campus-arises.html and http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/10/nyc-tech-campusdrives- sustainable-net-zero-impact