New York City Housing Authority – Valerie Amor – 2016

Goals:

One of the goals outlined in NYCHA’s Sustainability Agenda is to start on the path to meeting Mayor de Blasio’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. NYCHA enlisted the help of EDF Climate Corps fellow Valerie Amor to move NYCHA beyond its current incremental pathway and in the direction of deep retrofit strategies to meet the 80 x 50 goal.

Solutions:

Valerie reviewed NYC’s Technical Working Group report, which outlines building typologies and a series of pathways for incremental and deep retrofit strategies. To make these strategies NYCHA-specific, Valerie expanded the potential typologies to include six multi-family, residential typologies and seven building-type criteria. These criteria were incorporated into a spreadsheet to serve as filters for sorting NYCHA’s portfolio, providing the basis for deciding which prototype pilot projects would be both feasible and the most impactful in terms of number of buildings and greenhouse gas emission reductions. 

Valerie proposed three potential approaches to developing whole-systems deep retrofit strategies:

1. seal the building, relying on insulation and the control of air flow in and out of the building;

2. open the building, using either mixed-mode or natural ventilation; or

3. apply a second skin (adding an exterior layer to the existing building façade).

Potential Impact:

By creating typologies that are both NYCHA-specific and aligned with what the City has developed to reach its 80 x 50 goal, NYCHA can be part of the broad Mayoral effort and policies while addressing its own challenges.