Cornell New York City: Striving for Net Zero Energy in Manhattan
Randy Lacey, Cornell University
In early 2011, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City announced an international competition to build a new technology campus in New York City, and offered three potential sites and $100 million to the winner. During preparation of its proposal Cornell University saw an opportunity to use climate action experience from its Ithaca campus to create a highly sustainable tech campus. Net Zero Energy (NZE) was explored as a goal for the campus and was determined to be impractical with on-site energy generation. A goal of NZE was established for the proposal's initial academic building (150,000 square feet). Cornell won the competition, signed a contract with the City of New York, and has now begun design of the campus. Goals for renewable energy production have had a significant impact on the campus master plan and on design of the first building. The author will discuss the challenge of preserving a NZE goal for one building under constraints of architecture, cost, land use, and approvals.
Biography:
Randy Lacey is the university engineer and senior director of facilities engineering at Cornell University where he manages a staff of 50 engineers and project managers. He has bachelors and masters degrees in engineering from Cornell University. He has designed laboratories for more than 25 years and is active in Labs21 as an instructor and presenter. During three months of 2009 he worked in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Lab to create the Web-based resource Climate Neutral: Research Campuses.