In this latest event in the High Rise / Low Carbon Series, NYSERDA and BE-Ex have gathered industry experts that will feature projects utilizing hydronic systems, thermal networks, and waste heat recovery across the commercial sector. Developed in support of the Empire Building Challenge (EBC) this event will feature innovative strategies for heat recovery deployed by the award-winning partners in this flagship New York State program.

Commercial properties have long struggled with simultaneous heating and cooling needs across a single building and even across a single floor. Spaces like data centers predominantly require cooling, and are rejecting heat to the outside. At the same time, lightly occupied spaces require heat to ensure the comfort of the tenants. New models for sharing heat across building occupancies–moving heat, for instance, from that data center to the lightly occupied offices–offer significant performance improvements. Some of the most successful models have been utilized in the Nordic countries for many years and are directly aligned with the Resource Efficient Decarbonization (RED) framework developed by NYSERDA to advance deep retrofits of large buildings. The RED framework encourages projects to take a holistic approach to decarbonization that is founded on reducing demand and sharing heat across tenants, buildings, and districts. Advancing this approach across the US market could be a critical component of meeting our climate action goals.

Presentations of the thermal network components of some of the EBC partners will be followed by a dynamic panel discussion on the importance of these strategies in reducing energy waste, peak load demand, and energy cost, in line with achieving high performance retrofits of large buildings.