WHY DO LIBERTARIANS HATE BAKERS?:

Right-Time RetroFits (Caroline Fluhrer and Rebecca Cole, June 2010, RMI)

A year after RMI and our partners completed an award-winning retrofit design of the Empire State Building, the $550 million capital upgrade program is now underway.

Overall, the complete energy efficiency program will generate $4.4 million in annual energy cost savings, and cut the building’s energy use by nearly 40 percent, all with an incremental payback of just over three years.

A major portion of the project is to retrofit every one of the building’s approximately 6,500 double-hung windows in order to quadruple their energy performance. Only 10 years old, the windows will be removed, converted into “super insulating glass units” in a special on-site assembly area on a vacant floor of the building, and re-hung.

This project will generate $410,000 a year in energy savings at a total capital cost of $4.5 million and an incremental capital cost of $4 million (since $500,000 was already budgeted for window sealing and isolated replacements). This stand-alone project has a simple payback of just less than 10 years.