taking district energy to urban neighborhoods | snapshot | the sallan foundation
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SnapshotTaking District Energy To Urban Neighborhoods
By: Christina Grace
For: The Sallan Foundation
Date: February 2, 2012
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1 © 2012 The Sallan Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.sallan.org
Snapshot
From MUSH To The City of Tomorrow: Taking District Energy To Urban
Neighborhoods
Our urban environments need to simultaneously become more sustainable and meet greater
resource demands, but can we evolve from the city of today to the sustainable city of tomorrow
when, as the Urban Land Institute estimates, 80% of our existing building stock will still be in use
in 2030? The issue becomes even more pressing when factoring in that by 2050, 70–80% of the
world's population will be living in cities.
Living City Block (LCB) is grounded in the premise that the traditional urban block will be the
key to making cities sustainable from the inside out. In 2010, founder Llewelyn Wells, spun
Living City Block out of Rocky Mountain Institute to remove the barriers to fostering resilient
neighborhoods — inefficient use of resources, waste management, green infrastructure gaps, and
tears in a community's fabric.
LCB's solution is to aggregate commercial and residential building owners to work together on
neighborhood scale sustainability initiatives such as district energy, waste and stormwater
management, as well as alternative transportation. Now in its third year, LCB's pilot project in
Denver, Colorado's Lower Downtown (Lo Do) district has been working to show that building
owners who had not previously collaborated are willing to come together under a formal
agreement to create a more resource efficient community, increase the asset value of their
buildings, and decrease their energy costs.
LCB LoDo is moving forward on a project that will consolidate the demand for deep resource
retrofits across a set of buildings, retrofits that will be funded through one financing package and
paid for through subsequent energy savings. For this set, LCB is responsible for financing the
project that will ultimately deliver a comprehensive set of measures to decrease energy and water
use including but not limited to window upgrades, insulation, daylighting, lighting systems,
efficient chillers and boilers, fans, and water fixtures.
The community-building required to bring owners together into a legal entity, which in Denver is
called a "Building Owners Association," is no small feat. The business owners LCB works with
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Snapshot
From MUSH To The City of Tomorrow: Taking District Energy To Urban
Neighborhoods
are small to mid-sized business and building owners that typically own and operate 45% of the
total square footage of the commercial buildings in the US. Although commercial buildings are
often thought of as big-box stores or high-rises in city centers, according to Architecture 2030, 90
percent of US commercial property owners own a building smaller than 25,000 square feet. These
tend to be occupied and operated by small businesses that are less likely, in the current market, to
leverage their buildings to take on efficiency projects and lack the staff to spearhead this type of
work.
In the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, LCB is collaborating with a set of building owners to
take the model further by demonstrating that district energy is viable at the neighborhood scale.
The 34-year old Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation invited LCB to Brooklyn
in April of 2011 and acted as its partner in identifying a block ripe for the LCB model. At the
center of the project is the 85,000 square foot redevelopment of a set of traditional brick and
timber industrial buildings. The developer is deeply committed to sustainable design, resources
efficiency and community-building. While at this time the project specifics are still a work-in-
progress, and the ultimate decisions rest with 14 building owners, without the developer's
willingness to house district energy on his property, the project would not be possible.
One district energy option is to provide electricity and, by employing combined heat and power
(CHP), capture the "waste heat" created during the production of electricity for productive use,
including hot water, space heating, and space cooling. Although capable of using renewable fuels
such as biomass or landfill gas, CHP applications today predominately rely on natural gas.
According to a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority 2010 report, the
productive use of waste heat from such systems can result in overall energy efficiency of these
systems as high as 80%, providing significant environmental performance benefits.
New York City is a compelling market for community-scale energy. The region has sky-high
energy costs and utilities are grappling with aging, overextended infrastructure. New York State
and Con Edison already offer a number of incentive programs for energy efficiency measures and
renewable and clean energy to encourage alleviate pressure on the existing grid.
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Snapshot
From MUSH To The City of Tomorrow: Taking District Energy To Urban
Neighborhoods
But, up until now, district energy systems have gained traction primarily in what is referred to as
the MUSH market — municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals — for obvious reasons
including high energy usage, balanced loads, a single campus or agency owner and access to
traditional funding mechanisms. As Living City Block develops a clear model for organizing a
very diverse set of building owners, we need to address policy hurdles, both regulatory and
zoning, for implementing district energy projects across the different urban building types.
A critical issue is how to overcome regulatory barriers to moving electricity, water and steam
across property lines and streets. For example, in a CHP scenario, the waste heat from a CHP
plant can be used to produce the circulating hot water for the entire district, replacing the central
boilers in each building. To heat a district though, requires the pipes connecting the heating
network to extend outside of a single building, crossing property lines both private and public.
The project will require a waiver from the New York State Public Services Commission.
There is an encouraging precedent in New York State. The Burrstone Energy Center in Utica,
NY, which provides electric and thermal energy to the Faxton St. Luke's Hospital, St. Luke's
Nursing Home and Utica College, received a waiver from the PSC. There are also potential
zoning challenges, building and fire codes to address when siting district energy, especially if
New York City authorities categorize a district energy system as a power plant.
Here's the crucial question for LCB and Gowanus, how do we get from Burrstone, which supports
a two-owner "MUSH" system to encouraging more complex neighborhood district energy
projects?
One way forward might be to consider taking New York City's existing Solar Empowerment
Zones further. Currently, there are three geographic areas that have been selected as Solar
Empowerment Zones where solar energy systems are likely to provide the greatest benefits to
potential customers and the existing electric distribution system. They are in communities where
the power grid is currently oversubscribed and can experience power failures during peak load
events such as heat waves. Through relationships with the Department of Buildings, NYSERDA,
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Snapshot
From MUSH To The City of Tomorrow: Taking District Energy To Urban
Neighborhoods
Con Edison and other players in the solar market, the program encourages the use of solar by
assisting with permitting, incentive applications, grid interconnection, and market analysis. It has
the potential to be a strong public private partnership.
A 2011 report from the Bar Association of the City of New York examines how, on a pilot basis,
City government could streamline the permitting process for installing multi-party district energy
systems as one way to use the Zoning Resolution to shape a more sustainable city. Similar to the
Solar Empowerment Zones, the city could focus on districts that are vulnerable to brown- and
black-outs. A City-State partnership to encourage district energy would be critical as the State
exercises regulatory authority over the franchising of utilities, the regulation of rates, and the
siting of generation and transmission infrastructure.
Clean Energy Districts or even better, more comprehensive Sustainability Districts, could be
developed to streamline the state regulatory review and city permitting processes. In the end, for
Living City Block, while district energy on its own is central to greener communities, the greater
opportunity is to take an integrated approach to energy, water, waste to foster communities that
are resource efficient, economically thriving, healthy places to live, work and play.
Christina Grace is leading Living City Block's Brooklyn Gowanus project. She began her career
in sustainability working toward a more sustainable and fair food system. Christina created the
New York Department of Agriculture & Markets' Urban Food Systems Program. She has been
instrumental in passing local and federal food policy, building programs to connect New York
farmers with NYC markets, launching successful urban farm businesses, and developing
community-based food projects. She is raising her two daughters in Brooklyn's Gowanus/Carroll
Gardens neighborhood.