Empire State Building Achieves LEED Gold Certification – Green Building Elements

One of the most famous buildings in the world now has a new claim to fame. New York City’s Empire State Building has just received LEED Gold certification for existing buildings from the U.S. Green Building Council. While it isn’t the tallest building in the world to receive LEED certification, it is the tallest in the U.S., as well as probably the most well-known.

The Empire State Building owes its new LEED certification to a retrofit model created by the team of Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle and the Rocky Mountain Institute. This analytical model is a non-proprietary, open-source model that is and quantifiable, and is currently being replicated on other properties around the world. The retrofit is guaranteed to reduce the building’s energy consumption by more than 38 percent and should save $4.4 million in energy costs annually, according a press release from Jones Lang LaSalle.

The improvements also reduce the carbon emissions of the building by approximately 105,000 metric tons over 15 years. The Empire State Building is a carbon-neutral building as well.