The energy efficiency retrofit of the Empire State Building had the makings of a great story right from the start. Visionary building owner Tony Malkin, in an effort to revive the 2.7 million-square foot New York landmark, assembled a team of leading organizations—Rocky Mountain Institute, Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle, and the Clinton Climate Initiative—to develop a retrofit program that would not only maximize energy savings, but build a strong economic case, saving 38 percent of the building’s energy and $4.4 million annually—and created 252 jobs to boot.

Now, one year after the core retrofit is complete, the Empire State Building story is not only inspirational, but also very real. Today, Malkin and partners announced that the building exceeded its energy-efficiency guarantee by five percent, saving $2.4 million and establishing a commercial real estate model for reducing costs, maximizing return on investment, increasing real estate value, and protecting the environment.

(Learn about the savings in detail)

What ultimately set the Empire State Building apart are integrated design, and a ‘right-steps in the right-order’ model that can be applied to any building of any size.

“There aren’t a lot of people who give thought to what should we be designing. What RMI’s involvement was the special sauce:’ Looking at things differently from the pre-ordained fashion that most people have been trained in,” Malkin said. “They helped take this project and turned it into a language that anyone— liberal or conservative—can understand, which is make an investment, get a return, and the return happens to produce a better overall result without compromise.”

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