Skylight offers a peek inside Two Charlton Owner Corp.’s energy efficiency transformation

On October 29th, Skylight gath­ered an inti­mate grouping of home­owners at Two Charlton Street in SoHo for our first Clean Energy Building Tour. Attendees — who learned about the event through newslet­ters, neigh­bor­hood flyers, and word of mouth — came eager to learn about the build­ing’s decar­boniza­tion projects and connect with others navi­gating Local Law 97 (LL97) require­ments.

The tour began on the roof of the 16-story, 176-unit co-op, where Skylight’s Program Director Hannah Berman welcomed atten­dees and grounded everyone in the evening’s goals. As Berman made the point that decar­boniza­tion often feels most chal­lenging in resi­den­tial build­ings, a knowing chorus of grum­bles rolled through the group. Berman then intro­duced long­time Two Charlton Owners Corp. resi­dent and board member Chris McGinnis, who led the tour. Backlit by the skyscrapers of northern Manhattan, McGinnis provided a quick overview of the building and the projects it has under­taken to date, starting in 2014 when the building switched from relying solely on expen­sive fuel oil for its boiler to an oil and gas mix that cut oper­ating costs, and moving on to LED light bulbs, radi­ator insu­la­tors, venti­la­tion upgrades, elec­trical subme­tering, and more.

Attendees then turned their atten­tion to the building’s latest project: The Charlton House is currently in its final stages of replacing its existing roof with Sika’s high-resis­tivity roofing system, featuring vacuum insu­lated panels (VIPs). The new system has improved the roof’s insu­la­tion R‑value from roughly R10 to R35, meaning the building will burn less fossil fuel for heat in winter, and use less air condi­tioning in summer. The roofing system is one compo­nent of a multi-part project costing approx­i­mately $2M total, which also includes solar panels and the construc­tion of a roof deck for share­holders — a brand new amenity whose costs have been largely offset through federal credits. 

The next stop was the elec­tricity meter closet on the eighth floor — one of five in the building — where McGinnis intro­duced McGowan Southworth, Co-Founder and President of DaisyChain Energy. Southworth, who McGinnis calls his energy jungle guide, explained how DaisyChain helped Two Charlton move to subme­tering by tran­si­tioning from 183 indi­vidual Con Edison meters to one ConEd master meter, 176 resi­den­tial subme­ters, and seven commer­cial subme­ters. This shift moved the building from paying higher resi­den­tial rates per watt to lower commer­cial rates. A small portion of the savings has been passed on to resi­dents, with the remainder rein­vested in the building. For resi­dents, subme­tering also makes it easier to track their power usage and adjust their habits to reduce bills and energy consump­tion. The project was esti­mated to save the building around $60K annu­ally; since its September 2024 acti­va­tion, it has already gener­ated about $90K in savings.

In the base­ment, McGinnis showed off the complete upgrade and rebuild of the elec­trical room that enabled the subme­tering. The building did not elect to increase the building’s overall amperage during that project, but designed the new system to make future increases straight­for­ward, should they be needed. For now, Two Charlton has suffi­cient amperage to move forward on projects like in-unit heat pumps and elec­tric stoves — both on the horizon.

McGinnis next offered advice to atten­dees about tack­ling their own projects. Ever the planner and systems engi­neer, he encour­aged them to think long-term and holis­ti­cally about their own build­ings’ needs when plan­ning work, and to find people they trust to work with. Southworth alluded to the coming chal­lenges New York City’s elec­tricity grid faces as demand continues to grow, and encour­aged resi­dents to take advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties to curtail their build­ings’ energy use during peak periods. He explained how larger build­ings might even enter into agree­ments with util­i­ties that would pay them to reduce usage — by, for instance, running only one of two eleva­tors during peak hours. Two Charlton has been exploring such oppor­tu­ni­ties through their parking garage EV chargers and other means, and McGinnis expressed enthu­siasm about the revenue poten­tial of these demand response programs.

After the event offi­cially concluded, McGinnis and Southworth stayed to answer ques­tions about roof rebates, subme­tering require­ments, and project plan­ning. As one attendee said, ​“It’s a credit to this building and to Skylight that we don’t want to leave.” Even ten minutes after putting on their coats and heading into the cold October night, four coop­er­a­tors — previ­ously strangers — could be seen through the window talking about the event and comparing notes on their own build­ings’ projects and challenges.