Empire State Building Plans Environmental Retrofit

The Empire State Building is spending $20 million to make it more energy efficient. It is already undergoing a $500 million renovation to attract new tenants.

Once the world’s tallest building, the Empire State Building is striving for another milestone: It is going green.

Owners of the New York City landmark announced on Monday that they will be beginning a renovation this summer expected to reduce the skyscraper’s energy use by 38 percent a year by 2013, at an annual savings of $4.4 million. The retrofit project will add $20 million to the $500 million building makeover already under way that aims to attract larger corporate occupants at higher rents.

Although the retrofit was specifically designed for the Art Deco office building at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue and its enormous features — 102 stories, 2.6 million square feet, 6,500 windows and 73 elevators — the energy-efficiency improvements are meant to serve as a model for other office buildings around the world, said Anthony E. Malkin, president of Wien & Malkin, which supervises the building on behalf of the owners, the Malkin family and the Helmsley estate.

He said upfront costs are often a deterrent for retrofitting older buildings, but the energy savings for the building , built in 1931, are expected to pay back those costs in only about three years.

People involved with the retrofit said the Empire State Building can offer an example of how older buildings can retrofit to the highest energy standards and effectively cut down their greenhouse gas emissions, a contributor to global warming. The largest share of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions, 78 percent, comes from the city’s buildings, with commercial buildings contributing 25 percent, mostly from the use of electricity and natural gas.

By reducing energy use, the retrofit plan envisions cutting down the pollution the Empire State Building produces by 105,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, although the number of emissions currently emitted was not immediately available.

“They’re showing the rest of the city that existing buildings, no matter how tall they are, no matter how old they are, can take steps to significantly reduce their energy consumption,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

Some tenants are already ahead of their landlord. Skanska, a Swedish construction company that took over the 32nd floor in November with 80 employees, renovated its 24,400 square feet of office space to green standards like daylight sensors to conserve energy and dual-flush toilets to avoid wasting water.

The company, which says it has cut its electric bill by one-third with the improvements, is seeking platinum certification, the highest level awarded by the United States Green Building Council, which certifies buildings and commercial interiors for energy, water efficiency and other green features.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency rates buildings for energy efficiency under its Energy Star program, and 6,200 commercial and institutional buildings have earned the label by achieving 30 to 40 percent greater efficiency than their peers. The Empire State Building is expected to fall in the top 10 percent of Energy Star office buildings when its renovation is completed, the project designers said.