帝国大厦进行环保大改造

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Built in the 1930s during the Great Depression, the 102-storey Empire State Building is a giant art deco structure made of concrete. Inside are offices, restaurants and plenty of tourists who come for the breath-taking views of the Manhattan skyline.

Empire State’s prominence is what prompted owners to embark on a massive four-year project to reduce its carbon footprint and energy consumption.
The landmark will undergo a series of renovations, including replacing all of the skyscraper’s 6,500 windows with insulated glass that will reduce heat in the summer and trap it in the winter. Paul Rode is a project executive. "What we are going to do is keep all the positive benefits of the windows and reduce some of the negative benefits. There will be triple-glazed windows with an insulation value almost as great as the walls that they are connected to. Extra insulation will also be installed behind radiators to save heat.

Other plans include installing energy-efficient lighting, upgrading the building-control systems to make them more energy efficient and adding modern air-conditioning and heating systems whose output adjusts with usage.

"One of the things that we will be doing down here is taking these machines and making them more efficient. And we're doing that by stripping everything off this unit that you see. We then are going to put new tubes in and rebuild everything with high-efficiency equipment. In this manner, we'll be able to reduce the energy consumption of this machine and all the machines down here by almost half."

Which would in turn help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the building by some 105,000 tons a year.
Building owners say retrofitting old buildings to be more environmentally friendly is key to reducing levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in New York, nearly 80 percent of which come from city buildings.

"One of the key essential goals that we're trying to get across to folks across the world is that doing this is good business. There's no reason why this could not be done anywhere, and a decent return made anywhere in the world."

But Rode says upgrading infrastructure is not the only way to reduce energy consumption. People need to modify their habits, too.

Paige Kollock, VOA News, New York.