22-04-2025
Meet Manhattan's first housing co-op to electrify heating and cooling
Canary Media's 'Electrified Life' column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power.
At 420 East 51st St., nestled in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, a 13-story beige brick building sits among a handful of other hulking structures. Its tidy facade doesn't particularly stand out. Nor does its height. In fact, from the street it's impossible to see what makes the cooperatively owned 1962 building unique among most other apartment properties in New York City: Its residents opted to fully electrify the heating and cooling system.
The co-op board decided in 2023 to swap out the structure's original fossil-fuel steam system for large-scale electric heat pumps that provide space heating, cooling, and water heating. Utility and state incentives covered a whopping one-third of the $2.9 million project's cost.
The move, which the seven-member board approved unanimously, puts the co-op well ahead of the curve in complying with Local Law 97, the city's landmark legislation limiting CO2 emissions from buildings larger than 25,000 square feet. Owners of buildings that overshoot carbon thresholds face financial penalties.
The law's first reporting deadline is May 1, and the 110-unit co-op has hit its emissions reduction targets far ahead of schedule. With the upgrades completed last September, it'll avoid triggering penalties through 2049.
Also known as 420 Beekman Hill, the edifice is among the first multifamily structures in Manhattan to switch to all-electric heating, cooling, and water heating. It also appears to be the first co-op to do so, according to staff at NYC Accelerator, a building decarbonization initiative run by the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice.
The retrofit provides a model for the work that will need to happen in buildings around the country in order to achieve climate goals and comply with laws similar to Local Law 97, said Cliff Majersik, senior advisor at the nonprofit Institute for Market Transformation.
There are more than 30 million multifamily housing units in the U.S., 40% of which were heated with fossil fuels as of 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The co-op had originally relied on the local utility Con Edison's district steam system, which is primarily fed by fossil gas and some fuel oil. The retrofit design team weaned the building off that piped steam, solving a problem that still bedevils building owners connected to the hundreds of steam loops operating across the country, including in Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
'Getting off steam is the most challenging transition,' explained Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead at the Building Decarbonization Coalition, who added that he was really excited the Beekman Hill project popped up on his radar. 'This gives us an example' for how buildings on steam can go electric cost effectively and in a way that doesn't disrupt tenants' lives, he said.
The vanguard achievement in the Empire City comes as four states and 10 other locales have passed their own laws to rein in emissions from existing buildings, and more than 30 other jurisdictions have committed to adopting similar rules, known as building performance standards.
New York City's policy was among the first such laws to be passed in the U.S.
Under Local Law 97, 92% of buildings are expected to meet emissions standards within this first compliance period, which runs from 2024 to 2029, according to the nonprofit Urban Green Council. But getting buildings to make the deeper cuts needed to cumulatively slash emissions 40% by 2030 will take a lot more action.
NYC Accelerator, which helped on the Beekman Hill retrofit, exists to support city building owners with free resources, training, and one-on-one guidance to complete decarbonization projects.
'What we're seeing most of all is that these [retrofits] are complex and sometimes difficult,' said Elijah Hutchinson, executive director of the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. 'You do need to hand-hold and get to people very early.'
The accelerator is holding up Beekman Hill as a shining example of what's doable. Last month, the office threw an open house at the co-op so other building owners could see the climate-friendly upgrades.
Ten gleaming Aermec heat pumps on the roof capture heat from the winter air and shuttle it to heat exchangers in the basement, which then deliver that heat to the building's water-based hydronic system. The water carries the heat to each residential unit, where warmth wafts out from an unobtrusive piece of equipment called a fan coil.
Because all of the installation work, including an upgrade that tripled the building's electrical capacity, was done outside of the living spaces, 'there was no disruption to the tenants,' said Rahil Shah, engineer and director of sustainability at Ventrop Engineering Consulting Group, the firm that designed and managed the project.
In the summer, the heat pumps work in reverse, drawing heat from inside the apartments and dumping it outside. The double-duty equipment allowed the co-op to ditch its old absorption chillers that ran on Con Edison steam.
The new system also has three additional Colmac heat pumps in the basement that can give the water heated from the rooftop heat pumps a thermal boost. While those on the roof can only reach temperatures up to 110–120 degrees Fahrenheit, the basement heat pumps can reach 160°F — potent enough to store the co-op's hot water.
Shah said this is the first time that Ventrop Engineering has used both types of heat pumps together to help decarbonize a building's space and water heating. The firm plans to deploy the winning combo again in the future.
In all, Beekman Hill expects a 60% reduction in energy use and a 76% drop in its greenhouse gas emissions compared with running on steam. The building still has some gas stoves that it will need to replace in the coming years to go fully electric.
Without the updates, the co-op would have faced penalties of about $30,000 per year from 2030 to 2034. Fees would've climbed sharply afterward to nearly $90,000 per year by 2040. Plus, the building simply needed an upgrade: Its six-decade-old system was on the brink of breakdown.
What convinced the co-op to electrify? 'Me,' said Randolph Gerner, Beekman Hill resident and board member in charge of capital improvements, as well as principal at GKV Architects.
'On a board, you have different expertise. My expertise is very much in this field,' Gerner said. 'I've designed a number of buildings … and my new buildings are all electrified.'
With assistance from NYC Accelerator, Beekman Hill secured $154,000 from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's Multifamily Buildings Low-Carbon Pathways Program and $1 million from Con Edison's Clean Heat Program to help cover the project bill of $2.9 million before incentives. The co-op took out a loan to finance the rest over three years at a cost of about $15,000 to $20,000 per unit, depending on its size.
The funding actually made the project about $600,000 cheaper than the alternative — a traditional gas boiler and electric air-conditioning, Gerner said.
It's rare that building boards have architectural and engineering design pros on them, Gerner added. So neighboring co-ops have sought him out for guidance on how to decarbonize their buildings. He's already sat down with six other co-op boards in the past two years, he said.
Gerner's advice for co-ops grappling with whether to embrace heat pumps is simple: 'Give me a call.'
