Skylight takes New Yorkers behind the scenes of the Victoria’s energy-efficient renovation

On the evening of May 19, Skylight hosted their second clean energy building tour at the Victoria, a large co-op building down the block from Manhattan’s bustling Union Square. Building on the success of the first tour, hosted at the Charlton House in the fall, the event was an oppor­tu­nity for atten­dees to see up close the mechan­ical upgrades the building made to improve energy effi­ciency, guided by expert engi­neers and resi­dents who oversaw the work. 

The sold-out event, co-hosted by EN-POWER GROUP, the engi­neering firm that led the work at the Victoria, was attended by over 30 New Yorkers; a mix of co-oper­a­tors and clean energy enthu­si­asts, all eager to learn about how the building had been responding to Local Law 97 (LL97) requirements.

Skylight founder Eric Lee opened the evening by grounding the crowd in Skylight’s mission. The problem, he noted, isn’t that people don’t believe it is impor­tant to decar­bonize their build­ings — most New Yorkers align with the prin­ci­ples under­girding the city’s Climate Mobilization Act. But as the actual work comes before us, Eric explained, ​“New Yorkers are finding that it’s a daunting task, the work is expen­sive and it’s tech­ni­cally compli­cated.” And as this work falls on the shoul­ders of regular New Yorkers respon­sible for the manage­ment and oper­a­tion of their build­ings, he continued, ​“suddenly we are having to learn a whole lot about new tech­nology and building systems.”

Skylight’s hope is that ​“we can learn from one another, see the work that people are doing right now, and all get going faster with the actual reduc­tion of carbon emis­sions [in apart­ment buildings].” 

Next up was a prime example of a ​“doer,” Corinne Arnold, the board pres­i­dent of the Victoria. Arnold told the story of how the building got to where it is today. When LL97 first passed, the building initially wanted to be a pioneering ​“first mover” and go fully elec­tric. But after consulting with several engi­neering firms, the board held back — not because they didn’t believe in the work, but because the numbers didn’t add up. The engi­neers they spoke to under­stood the tech­nical side, but not the finan­cial. For a co-op, Arnold stressed, every deci­sion is a finan­cial one, and the costs of full elec­tri­fi­ca­tion were just too much. The build­ing’s money belongs to its share­holders, and any project has to make sense as a long-term invest­ment, not just as an energy play. It wasn’t until they met EN-POWER GROUP that they found a firm that under­stood both sides of the equation.

Arnold then handed off to Amalia Cuadra, senior director of engi­neering at EN-POWER GROUP who oversaw the project from start to finish. Cuadra opened with a descrip­tion of what the building looked like before any of the work began: two large steam boilers handling many systems at once — boiling water to make steam for heating, domestic hot water and also using the steam to power the cooling system. ​“It doesn’t take a genius to know that’s really inef­fi­cient,” she said. She then walked the group through the scope of the work EN-POWER had under­taken: a full elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of its cooling plant, new high-effi­ciency boilers, and signif­i­cant plumbing upgrades, coor­di­nated across seven contrac­tors over several years. With that overview in place, the group headed down­stairs to see it for themselves.

The first stop was the boiler room, where the scale of the trans­for­ma­tion was imme­di­ately visible. Where the two aging steam boilers once sat, four compact, high-effi­ciency condensing boilers now stood. Three boilers are enough to heat the entire building, Cuadra explained, with the fourth kept in reserve. The building has just come through its first full winter with the new setup. ​“We did not get complaints,” Arnold noted — notable, someone pointed out, given how cold this past winter actu­ally was. Now, with summer approaching, the team was gearing up to test the cooling system for the very first time.

The tour split in two, and Cuadra led half the group to the chiller room, where the new cooling system was installed. The build­ing’s old steam absorp­tion chillers have been replaced by sixteen modular elec­tric units — more than ten times more effi­cient than what they replaced, and capable of providing heat during shoulder seasons as well as cooling in summer.

Meanwhile, EN-POWER mechan­ical engi­neer Savan Patel led the other group to the elec­trical room, which has been almost completely rebuilt as part of the broader over­haul — a behind-the-scenes upgrade that made many of the build­ing’s other projects possible.

The tour concluded with drinks and snacks in the lobby. It was, by all accounts, a warm ending to a warm evening — the crowd lingered after the formal program had wrapped, still exchanging cards, tales of trials and wins, and comparing notes on their own build­ings. One attendee commented that Skylight was ​“doing God’s work” in showing what successful solu­tions look like in a building much like her own.

The tone of the evening was dictated by the spirit of the work at the Victoria, which proves that prag­ma­tism need not come at the expense of mean­ingful improve­ment. Corinne Arnold and her board didn’t set out to be heroes of the clean energy tran­si­tion — they set out to make a good invest­ment for their share­holders. That they ended up doing both is the point. For the thirty-odd New Yorkers who came out on a Tuesday night to walk through a boiler room and talk about effi­ciency ratings, that was more than enough inspi­ra­tion to take home.