From The MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
The race is on to see who hits the green energy wall of impossibility first. California, Germany and the UK (the “Poseurs”) might seem to have leapt early into the lead positions. But New York is now making a strong sprint to catch and surpass them, so it can be the first to splatter its citizens’ flesh and blood all over the impenetrable barricade.
The Poseurs accumulate vast green progressive virtue credits for ridiculous promises, but their promises all have dates so far in the future that today’s politicians will be long gone when the crash detonates. Germany promises 100% of electricity from renewables by 2035. Whoopie! Chancellor Scholz will be out tending his unfertilized Spargel gardens long before then. In California they don’t promise 100% renewable electricity until 2045, by which time Governor Newsom will likely be not just retired but dead.
Who has sufficiently pure cult adherence to set firm green energy deadlines with real consequences in the here and now? That task has fallen to the true climate heroes here in New York City.
New York City’s bid to create the first real test of an impossible green energy deadline is found in its Climate Mobilization Act of 2019, the key part of which goes by the name Local Law 97. LL97 (formal name: New York City Administrative Code Sections 28-320 and 28-321) imposes energy efficiency standards on large residential buildings starting in 2024 — next year. Buildings that fail to meet the standards are subject to large and accelerating fines starting right away.
It appears that the owners of these buildings are just now figuring out that the standards that have been set cannot be met, at least not in any remotely reasonable way. What next?
The New York Times had a big front page article on Monday about the maneuvers of one large building to try to comply with the law. The headline (online version) is “A Huge City Polluter? Buildings. Here’s a Surprising Fix.”
The building that is the subject of the profile is called The Grand Tier. It is a large (280 apartments), newish (built 2005), and very high-priced building that you may even have seen, because it sits directly across Broadway from Lincoln Center at West 64th Street. To give you an idea of the market segment the building is in, the only apartment listed at the moment on the Streeteasy website is a one bedroom for $5895 per month.
The owner of the building is Glenwood Management. Here are a few things about Glenwood that do not appear in the Times’ piece. It is one of the major apartment developers in the City, known for highest-end buildings and premium rents. The long-time head of the company was Leonard Litwin, for many years the single largest donor to New York’s Democratic Party and big backer of power broker and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Litwin died in 2017 at age 102, shortly after Silver was convicted in 2015 on corruption charges, some of which involved his relationship with Litwin. (Silver then died in 2022 while still serving his prison term.). Meanwhile, the value of Litwin’s protection money payments ran out when the radical wing of the Democrats gained full control of the State Legislature in 2019. LL97 takes direct aim at major large-building residential landlords like Glenwood, who are one of the main designated villains of the climate morality play.
Anyway, the people now running Glenwood, who are no dummies, have figured out that even in a premium building like this that is rolling in money, compliance with LL97 on its own terms is not a realistic option. The building is heated with natural gas — as are nearly all similar buildings. Being the goodie goodie Democratic Party sycophants that they are, the Glenwood people initially tried the route of compliance with the new standards on their own terms by doing all the obvious things to increase energy efficiency. But it was not nearly enough. From the Times:
Ahead of the new climate law, the company had made all the easy changes to save energy and reduce emissions: it replaced incandescent light bulbs with LEDs, upgraded old fan motors and improved insulation. But it wasn’t enough: The Grand Tier was set to face roughly $100,000 per year in fines starting in 2024, rising to $400,000 per year in 2030, because of those two giant carbon-spewing boilers in the basement.
The only route left to comply with the literal terms of the law would have been to convert the whole building to electric heat, which would mean a full re-wiring from top to bottom, at enormous expense. To avoid that, the Glenwood people are trying a different gambit: Carbon Capture! From the Times again:
[T]he hot exhaust from [the building’s natural gas] boilers [is] funneled through a duct to a small, spotless room filled with pipes, rumbling compressors and metal tanks. Inside several of those tanks [are] dry absorbent materials that look like lentils and bind to carbon dioxide, allowing the machines to filter out other gases like nitrogen and oxygen. The remaining carbon dioxide [are] then chilled to minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit and turned to liquid.
One problem: carbon capture is not a permitted option under the law for complying with its emissions standards. And the City bureaucrats are not about to stick their necks out to help the likes of Glenwood — or any of the thousands of other landlords caught in the same spot. From the Times:
For now, however, carbon capture faces an enormous hurdle: It has not been approved by the city as a solution that complies with Local Law 97, since the technology didn’t exist when the law was drafted. The Department of Buildings, which enforces the law, said it is reviewing CarbonQuest’s system but has a number of questions, such as how to verify the emission reductions claimed by the Grand Tier.
And to top it off, the carbon capture system that Glenwood has come up with only sequesters about 60% of the CO2 that the building’s boilers generate. No way will that satisfy the environmental zealots behind LL97, who detest half-way measures and want fossil fuels extirpated.
A few of the other wealthiest landlords will likely try something like the Glenwood gambit. But I can’t imagine any substantial number of landlords, most of whom are not remotely in Glenwood’s market niche, actually going through with full building rewirings and installation of heat pumps that will fail on the many days per year when temperatures here are in the 20s and below. We’re about to see thousands of buildings designated as law-breakers and subjected to punishing annual fines, with no realistic way to get around them. Let’s see how long this can continue.
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Unicorns on treadmills?
@Tom Halla – Unicorns ? Really ?
1) Where can New York find enough virgins to interact with the unicorns, to take care of them ?
2) Where can New York find enough land for the treadmills for the unicorns where the only folk nearby are virgins ?
3) If the unicorns are vegetarians, their digestion produces CO2 and Methane …
4) If the unicorns are carnivores, the ecoweenies won’t allow them to be used on the treadmills – plus, who wants to clean up after carnivorous equinoids ?
5) This is New York – and they have yet to require that folk use electric motors to run the treadmills to generate the electricity for their buildings … isn’t that the next “logical” step for New York legislators ?
You are not thinking like a politician which means you need to stop thinking and keep promising rainbows. Oh and yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And Bodach his sleigh rides will be powered by 100% unicorn farts by 2035…or 45, or some subsequent date on some future calendar what matters is the dream not the conditions under the candle lit Christmas tree.
Oh well. The liquid CO2 can be used as fracking fluid.
Sooner or later someone will realise that a few underworld contracts could be a much cheaper option.
“Sooner or later someone will realise that a few underworld contracts could be a much cheaper option.”
________________________________________________________
The left doesn’t have any objection to using such tactics. Ashili Babbit, Jeffery Epstein, Seth Rich… There are probably more. Plus we now have political prisoners Jacob Chansley and a few others. They also create hideous riots every four years, we’ll see what 2024 brings.
JFK…
Oswald said he was “just a patsy”
When did he say that?
What’s your evidence?
Source, please?
I’m certain that Lee Harvey didn’t kill JFK but he sure tried his darnedest. Likely killer? JFK was accidentally shot by a startled, hungover Secret Sevice agent in the follow car.
You need to do a search on “Lee Harvey Oswald I’m a patsy”.
I did not know the evidence or source either and was greatly surprised.
I read a couple of those “sources”. They all boil down to somebody said that somebody else told them that Oswald said it.
Here is the video of Oswald saying it:
https://youtu.be/sbR6vHXD1j0
Vince Foster and Ron Brown were not available for comment.
Underworld contracts aren’t needed. Most all landlords carry fire insurance.
@Ed Zuiderwijk – is there any reason to believe that the Devil has any interest in more souls from New York ? Plus, could the Devil do any worse than New York Democrats ?
It appears that the owners of these buildings are just now figuring out that the standards that have been set cannot be met, at least not in any remotely reasonable way. What next?
Not an issue. These people are NOT really interested in lower CO2 – they would have gone nuclear long ago if they were.
They are interested in power – so they will not risk themselves being voted out of office. They are interested in compliance, so they will not risk requiring the impossible. What they will do is find some form of words or loophole which allows this farce to proceed for as long as possible – where ‘loophole’ may be as simple as suppressing all comment on situations where a breach is unavoidable. They did that with whale deaths due to wind turbines, for instance.
In the end, logic is not applicable in this situation. It is a religion. It can survive an irresistable force meeting an immovable object quite easily by applying Jesuitical equivocation….
I started to write about how all of the electricity entering the buildings will be produced by burning fossil fuels and the electrical distribution system is inadequate and the costs are prohibitive, and…I realized we all know this. In a nutshell, this is all insanity.
“Liberalism is a serious mental disorder”. Now the landlords get a chance to understand that maxim up close and personal.
You missed the obvious Net Zero case where nobody has a car or a house, and eats dead grass…
The Loony Left destroys everything they touch.
Now it’s New York’s turn.
Idiocracy.
but there’s also a Loony Right- time for some old fashioned Yankee common sense that is neither, and well understood by the ordinary citizen- I think most Americans don’t identify as left or right- which is why our politics switches so often from one to the other with too few of the elected having common sense- I’d like to see politicians say, “let’s get back to common sense and avoid left and right bullshit”- the constitution, bill of rights and decency to protect the most vulnerable without having to pretend we’re going to solve everybody’s problems
If they had any common sense they wouldn’t be politicians.
well, there is a need for that role- of course now the word has a very negative connotation- there have been a few, like Abe Lincoln with little formal education but a lot of common sense
While lacking formal education, he was more familiar with the classics, and more articulate, than most college graduates today.
Same for George Washington. He might have been better “educated” if his father hadn’t died while he was young – and if the Brits had let him into THEIR army instead of just the colonial army, he might not have hated them so much. George was a man of few words but when he spoke everyone listened!
90% of the time, people identified as loony-right, are actually loony-left.
Don’t you mean 91.4632436474563856 +/1.0000000000000001%
Define “common sense.”
yuh, of course, that’s always a problem and everyone defines it differently- for me it means when it comes to political ideas to not depend on “experts”
I googled the term and found the following which I like:
I think most people don’t believe there is a climate emergency- which is a good example of common sense.
Then there’s the book called “Common Sense”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense
I think you missed the sarcasm.
You’re just too sophisticated for this back woodsman.
“but there’s also a Loony Right”
So the Loony Left says.
I don’t think conservative thinking is Loony, so I don’t believe in a Loony Right the way the Loony Left describes it.
There is a small group of extremists that espouse some conservative principles like individual freedom but that doesn’t put them in the same category as a conservative, because they promote violence, whereas conservatives do not promote violence.
Conservatives do not believe in the violent overthrow of the government.
The Loony Left does believe in the violent overthrow of the government.
The Loony Left lies about conservatives all the time. If the Loony Left didn’t have lies, they wouldn’t have anything.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply all conservatives are loony. I think there are some good ideas from across the political spectrum. It would be foolish to say one side has all the answers. I like social security and medicare- I like some elements of protecting the environment. I also believe in the constitution and bill of rights. And, amazingly for an old hippy- I support the 2nd amendment. Personally, I hate guns- but I’d like to think if I change my mind for any reason I can easily get one- because- I don’t trust the government. Tyrants don’t like their subjects having easy access to guns. I don’t bother people who like guns and they don’t bother me.
It’s time to get rid of the “left, right, liberal, conservative” labels as they have been long misused. The correct labels, for Americans at least, should constitutionals and unconstitutionals.
I’d like to see politicians say, “let’s get back to common sense and avoid left and right bullshit”?
Have you really never heard them say it? I thought they all said it, Googling for quotes.
What was that “moderate” coalition of not left/not right that tried to get traction a few years ago?
Liberals, all of them. None of them ever saw a problem where the solution wasn’t more government. They just pretended to be what they weren’t.
Those on the Left are devoid of common sense. Otherwise, they would be conservatives.
“But New York is now making a strong sprint to catch and surpass them…”
Woke-achusetts is also in the race. After all, it’s this state that sued the EPA in the Supreme Court so they’d issue the infamous “finding”. MA is full scale bonkers over the “climate emergency”. It claims to be the most energy efficient state in America, which may be true thanks to having exported all our industries, other than universities, hospitals and some high tech. Currently there are efforts here to stop all logging- a professor Moomaw has published a paper on a theme he fantasized called “proforestation”- which means we must lock up all the forests so their only function is to sequester carbon “to save the planet and biodiversity”. Yes, I think MA is the Mecca of the this climate lunacy. Michael Mann spent time here and his comrade with his infamous hockey stick paper was a prof at U. Mass.
The political leanings of elementary teachers resurface in voting much later in the grownup culture. Median 1980s middle school students are now in their financial prime.
not a subject I know much about- but I’d think it depends on what part of America- certainly true in the so called “progressive” states like CA, NY, and MA
me thinks the main priority of all public school teachers is to support their labor union because, in my opinion, they are vastly overpaid- and, in MA, I see most towns in recent years are building new schools which cost a fortune, not because the old buildings were in terrible shape but because it would be nice for the teachers to work in new buildings- of course they claim the buildings are falling down- in my home town in the Berkshires, it was claimed that the middle school I went to in the early ’60s- the roof was going to collapse any moment- so the town allocated a ton of money to tear the school down and build another one- but when they hired a company to take it down- that company said they had a huge problem dismantling the roof because it was so strongly made! But of course the town wasn’t going to allow a roof to cave in on students so the town got suckered.
The situation would be more tolerable without money games. I played a corporate rec basketball game in a South Boston public school building, and I have to say I would not knowingly send my children to it. The bathroom was nightmarish in scent and appearance.
Possible solution: Agree on a “replace by” date before the building is built. Obviously that system would create yet more opportunity for gaming, but at least we could then say that a building built before 1960 (mow 80 y/o) is “used up”.
There’s a lot of ‘pro-forestation’ going on in NE. Anyone walking through the ‘woods’ there quickly comes upon untold miles of stone walls that once defined fields and pastures. (God only knows how anyone ever scratched a living out of these hills). However, I assume the progressive transplants from New York and Boston love the all of the vegetation, notwithstanding the accompanying deer ticks and power outages.
When Nixon went to China and they showed him The Great Wall, supposedly he said “there is more stone in the walls of New England than this Great Wall”. Probably true too. You can find them everywhere deep in the forests. Scratching a living on such land made those Yankees tough. Then in about 1830 the Eire Canal opened up- the farmers were told “get to the Canal then you can ride out to lots of free land- flat and with top soil dozens of feet deep- and few rocks in them”. That emptied many New England towns. So there is a lot more forest now than in 1830 but the proforestation nutjobs want no more tree cutting. After all, they already own nice wood homes with nice wood furniture and lots of paper products.
True what you say that the Erie Canal opened up better farmland in the Midwest, and the trend subsequently emptied many New England towns. John Deere, the Vermont blacksmith who founded the farm equipment company, was one of them. Deere invented a plow especially effective at turning over prairie soil. It attracted more farmers to the Corn Belt.
It’s also true that the California Gold Rush a generation after the Erie Canal, emptied out many more small New England towns. Plymouth, MA, where the Pilgrims first landed, lost about a third of its young men within a few years of the gold discovery at Sutter’s Mill.
Eugene O’Neill’s play, “Desire Under the Elms” is set on a 19th century New England farm. The plot hinges on a tyrannical father who irks two of his three sons so much, that they set out for the west rather than put up with him.
Of course, there is always the option of “ethnic lightning’
The DemoTwats are doing their best to crash the banking system so why not move on to the property market.
Not needed: “DemoTwats“
How ’bout libtards?
Lets cut through the cr4p here:Glenwood have come unstuck, and are becoming increasingly more so, because they tried a policy of Appeasement
All throughout Human History it has never worked out well for the appeasers.
(are you really sure you know how the GHGE works)
Glenwood should have just installed some huuuuuge fugoff electric immersion heaters to replace the gas boilers (as per Heat Pumps turn into when temps drop) and crashed the New York grid…….
While their “carbon capture” system couldn’t have been cheap, how would its cost compare to re-wiring the building to accommodate such heaters?
Appeasement rarely works in the end. There’s the old saying about feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat you last…..
What they should have done from the get-go is sue, sue, sue! A company with that kind of financial resources should be able to gear up an impressive team of lawyers to try and repel and negate these laws in court.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of their renters aren’t fully bought into the global warming scam, and those that aren’t are making money off it.
If they publicly fought too hard, they risk losing their appeal to the wokerati, and hence their ability to charge ridiculous rental fees.
I wonder if water pipes will freeze in compliant buildings?
Don’t know about the pipes, the tenants certainly might.
Thank the Lord for the idiots in charge of New York. The faster they go the better in their search of a local Net Zero. Pretty soon, when the fines kick in and the rents go out-of-sight the rest of their tax base will haulass to Florida leaving the area to slowly go back to Nature. Maybe we aught to ship ’em a few Kudzo rhizomes to speed up the process :<)
“…New York… Pretty soon, when…. rents go out-of-sight…”
Imagine if it were expensive to live in NYC? What a strange, different world it would be, surely a different place than exists today. /s
Wish I could give you more pluses. I wish California would speed up their process. Maybe they aren’t as stupid as the City of New York, but that just doesn’t sound right.
Looks like the best option for the landlords is filing for chapter 11, that will protect them from the fines, or sell to the Chinese government…..
$400,000 over 280 apartments is a rent hike of $1,500 a year. Bill it as a contribution to a green city, and the residents will be eager to pay for it. Try and do the same thing on 85th St and you would have a riot on your hands.
The rent hike idea means the building owners’ profits don’t change.
You made an excellent point us nonrich citizens missed: it’s an immaterial charge to the renters and owners. 400 grand sounds a lot to us. It’s pocket change – literally! – to the entire building renters.
Yes, that kind of money is indeed pocket change to the very wealthy. But, if the building’s owners did install the kind of equipment required by the law, I can’t imagine that the residents would put up with paying that kind of rent to live in cold, dark apartments!
Francis, why do you live in Manhatten? For example, your comment “Grand Tier”…”you may even have seen, because it sits directly across Broadway from Lincoln Center…”, is in reality this (I was in NYC so my wife can check off the box entitled “see aliens from Mars in Times Square”), but didn’t walk down Broadway because you had to dodge drug dealers, homeless people (sorry, persons without a roof), and blood stains with chalk outlines. Get out of there before it’s too late.
I agree with you RL but I’m not interested in those aliens.
However, Google Street View can show you the Grand Tier Apartments in context. Or search for images: Grand Tier Luxury Apartments
Go to: 40.772246, -73.982464
It is the tall building on the east (right) side.
Isn’t it highly likely that all the auxiliary equipment that’s needed to separate and extract the CO2 is based on fossil-fueled electricity? The same for making, transporting, and installing that equipment.
I suppose they could always buy some surplus power plants from the navy and replace those noxious gas boilers that way.
Despite exhibiting behaviors I might not celebrate, USA DoD has invested in and/or preserved technology that USA and/or all humanity might need. Nuclear powered navy ships and their suppliers contain wonderous ideas.
I understand that one of the carriers could power a small city in an emergency. Wonder why that technology hasn’t found it’s way to dry land yet??
Aren’t military nuclear power plants still highly classified?
The designs are, but the technology behind the reactors isn’t.
I’ve wondered that too. A small nuke plant like on a carrier could supply steam that would heat large portions of a city….My husband served in the Navy and lived on a carrier for some time. He said they had plenty of steam to launch the aircraft, the ship was warm in the coldest climates and the showers were nice and hot. All from the steam produced by the nuke plant.
New York – Putting the dumb in crash test dummy.
This is the Illogical nonsense that occurs when you californicate a city.
Or Manhattanize a city.
How many have to die in the cold, when the grid comes crashing down, for the insanity to end?
None, if they have access to cars,
If they have access to cars that work when you need them.
” … of heat pumps that will fail on the many days per year when temperatures here are in the 20s and below.”
Heat pumps installed in cold climates would normally have resister-elements. In my stick-built home I have had such for 15 years.
The really serious issue is the need for emergency heat when the electricity goes off. The big buildings will need a second source of heat or thousands in NYC will die.
They will also still need diesel powered generators for such emergencies. Modern buildings are so tightly sealed that the air would quickly turn deadly (CO2 buildup from people breathing) without mechanical ventilation. Not to mention heat….My husband used to work on commercial HVAC and said that buildings had to be empty of residents before the systems could be shut down. Generally they did what ever they could to avoid shutdowns….
As long as the dying are the idiots that vote for that shit. As opposed to everyone else being the collateral damage for their idiocy.
Socialize rentals by selling buildings to City, which can then use profits to Green the buildings?
Building owners association that points out ALL of them face the same time crunch which they CAN’T meet because NYC doesn’t have the electricity infrastructure to handle the expected load, so therefore the timing must be changed not just totally but sector by sector? Pull in the EV mandates, gas stove requirements. Then Association lawsuits based on Force Majeure reasoning.
NYC is, along with AOC, doing its best to stop new and maintenance investments alike, while driving away cost-sensitive, well-heeled citizens with career and family flexibility/options.
Is this part of a plan to decrease 1st World standards of living (affluence) for the “Planet”? Or eliminate voters who disagree with Progressive politics, while solidifying political control by the remaining voting zealots?
For other dummies like me: “In contract law, force majeure (from French: ‘overwhelming force’, lit. ’superior force’) is a common clause in contracts which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, epidemic, or sudden legal change prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.”
Given the truth of Twain’s observation, the only solution is to let it play out. Maybe after all the bankruptcies and deaths they will catch on.
A problem with “set a target and the market will solve it” is that sometimes the market turns into a crowd waiting for someone else to solve it.
You can’t dictate solutions. The market is creative, often disruptive and the solution may not be politically acceptable.
For example, if the world is in a climate crisis due to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, then nuclear is a great solution. But nuclear power just doesn’t fly with the Net-Zero crowd. Nuclear isn’t the “right” solution and no matter how safe and economical the market makes it, that solution won’t get any traction.
If the market is sitting around, it’s because the math doesn’t add up.
Nobody voluntarily invests in a project that they don’t think will make money.
@MarkW – *cough* Solyndra *cough* …
Turned down by the Bush administration, then eagerly supported by the incoming Obama administration …
Won’t some $$ not be able asking for an exemption ?
It’s almost fun to watch when you’re not one of the unfortunate “minority party” voters living in the Vampire State who didn’t vote for this mass idiocy, as you watch those who did be hoist by their own petard.
Hopefully most of the residents of my native Staten Island will be in buildings that are too small to be subject to this lunacy, but you know they’ll just keep pushing until any useful source of heat is “banned” to “save” us all – from nothing. I’m no longer living there, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go back.
I actually want them to accelerate their colossally idiotic “plans” as much as possible, so that the resulting catastrophe will discourage others. Better it happen in NY, where they experience actual winter weather state-wide. CA is a bit too dissociated from the penalties of not providing adequate and reliable heat and electricity due to the warmer climate that prevails over much of the state and most of its population centers.
Let the NY loons vote themselves into extinction quickly so all can see how stupid these ideas are, so the cancer might stop spreading.
The politicians will not be responsible. God punishes the sinners who didn’t comply.