The solution to the misconceptions and technical barriers faced by decarbonization laid out in previous pages is the Resource Efficient Electrification (REE) framework. This novel approach comes out of the Empire Building Challenge after one year of collaboration between real estate companies, industry-leading engineering consultants and NYSERDA. REE is a novel approach of building decarbonization tailored to cold climate tall buildings but that can be applied across New York’s, wide array of building types, vintages and systems. This heuristic incorporates strategic capital planning, an integrated design process, and an incremental, network-oriented approach to deliver building heating, cooling, and ventilation which:
- requires limited or no combustion,
- enables carbon neutrality,
- is highly efficient at low design temperatures and during extreme weather,
- is highly resilient, demand conscious, and energy grid-interactive,
- reduces thermal waste by capturing as many on-site or nearby thermal flows as possible, and
- incorporates realistic and flexible implementation strategies by optimizing and scheduling low carbon retrofits phase-in.
Resource Efficient Electrification focused on implementing enabling steps that will keep future optionality as technology and policy evolves. This framework allows the building owner or manager to take action now instead of waiting for better technology and potentially renewing a fossil-fueled powered energy system for another life cycle.