Bank of America Tower (New York City) - Environmental Features

Environmental Features

The design of the building makes it environmentally friendly, using technologies such as floor-to-ceiling insulating glass to contain heat and maximize natural light, and an automatic daylight dimming system. The tower also features a greywater system, which captures rainwater for reuse. Bank of America states that the building is made largely of recycled and recyclable materials. Air entering the building is filtered, as is common, but the air exhausted is cleaned as well. Bank of America Tower is the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.

The Bank of America tower is constructed using a concrete manufactured with slag, a byproduct of blast furnaces. The mixture used in the tower concrete is 55% cement and 45% slag. The use of slag cement reduces damage to the environment by decreasing the amount of cement needed for the building, which in turn lowers the amount of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas produced through the normal cement manufacturing process. Each ton of regular cement produced creates about one ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Temperature control and the production of some of its energy are accomplished in an environmentally friendly manner for the tower. Insulating glass reduces thermal loss, lowering energy consumption and increasing transparency. Carbon dioxide sensors signal increased fresh air ventilation when elevated levels of carbon dioxide are detected in the building.

Conditioned air for the occupants is provided by multiple air column units located in the tenant space that deliver 62 °F air into a raised access floor plenum. This underfloor air system provides users with the ability to control their own space temperature as well as improving the ventilation effectiveness. When building churn occurs, workstation moves can be performed more easily with lower cost and less product waste.

The cooling system produces and stores ice during off-peak hours, and allows the ice to melt to help cool the building during peak load, similar to the ice batteries in the 1995 Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, Japan. Ice batteries have been used since absorption chillers first made ice commercially available 150 years ago, before the invention of the electric light bulb.

Water conservation features in the tower include waterless urinals, which are estimated to save 8,000,000 USgal (30,000,000 l) of water per year and reduce CO₂ emissions by 144,000 lb (65,000 kg) per year (as calculated with the Pacific Institute water-to-air model). The tower has a 4.6-megawatt cogeneration plant, which provides part of the base-load energy requirements. Onsite power generation reduces the significant electrical transmission losses that are typical of central power production plants.

In June 2008, the New York Academy of Sciences launched a podcast which highlights these green features.