The word environment was mentioned only once during the debate between Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Comptroller Bill Thompson on October 13^th. Bloomberg named a long list of issues—environment just one among them—and urged voters who care about those issues to vote for him on Tuesday.

The two candidates for mayor of New York City may have had a good reason to avoid talking about the environment. Both find themselves on the same side of a major environmental initiative: they support PlaNYC 2030, an ambitious blueprint for cutting the city’s carbon output 30 percent by 2030. But a critical component of the plan—figuring out a way to cut down on energy consumption by existing buildings—remains in limbo more than two and a half years after the city introduced the plan.

Without cracking down on the “gas guzzlers,” or buildings that use up the most energy due to their size and structure, meeting PlaNYC’s goals may prove difficult. Nancy Biberman, president of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, a Bronx-based nonprofit organization that helps retrofit buildings for energy efficiency, estimates that 80 percent of the city’s carbon output comes from existing buildings.

“It is at this point morally inexcusable and hopefully at some point legally impermissible for a [building] owner to sit on a gas guzzler and say, ‘I’m not paying for it. Let it be,’ ” Biberman said. Under current law, owners can simply pass along energy costs to tenants. This provides them with a “complete disincentive” to make their buildings more energy efficient, Biberman added.

A bill introduced in April by City Council Member James Gennaro, Democrat from Queens, could change that. Gennaro, chairman of the environmental protection committee, wants to require commercial buildings with more than 50,000 square feet of space to undergo periodic energy audits. If existing energy systems, such as boilers and central heating, are found to be deficient, owners would have to replace them with newer, more efficient models.

“This is one of the ways we plan to meet the ambitious emissions reductions in PlaNYC,” Jason Post, a spokesperson from the Mayor’s Press Office, said in an email.

But the bill faces steep opposition from the Real Estate Board of New York, the voice of the city’s building owners. “This bill would result in major expenditures by landlords while the tenant gets whatever savings are achieved,” Marolyn Davenport, the board’s senior vice president, said in an email exchange.

Biberman said the Real Estate Board’s position is “disingenuous” because, while the tenants may be the ones consuming the energy, they cannot go into the basement and install a more energy efficient boiler just for their office space. Only the building owners can make those kinds of improvements. Biberman hopes the Gennaro bill will finally give them a reason to do so.

The battle over the bill may resume soon. William Murray, environmental policy assistant to Council Member Gennaro, said he expects the bill to be deliberated within the next month or so. “At that time, we’ll have a better sense of where it’s going,” Murray said.

Gathered outside the Museo del Barrio before the debate on October 13^th, some members of organized labor cited Bloomberg’s support for the Gennaro bill as one reason why they would be voting for him on November 3^rd.

“We think it’s a great idea. Retrofitting creates more jobs, it creates good union construction jobs, it’s a win-win situation for everybody,” said Pat Purcell, a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Union, local 1500, based in Queens Village.

Anne Fenton, a spokesperson for the Thompson campaign, said in an email the candidate also supports retrofitting older buildings to make them more energy efficient. Doing so, she said, could eliminate the need to build new power plants and help create jobs. Fenton declined to say whether Thompson supports the Gennaro bill.

Andrew Doba, a spokesperson for the Bloomberg campaign, said in an email the Mayor considers reduction of New York’s carbon footprint to be an “urgent priority” and, if re-elected, will “work expeditiously to update and implement PlaNYC over the next four years.”

Bloomberg is running as a Republican and Independent candidate, while Thompson is running as a Democrat. But New Yorkers opposed to PlaNYC also have a third choice.

“Energy efficiency is all well and fine. I don’t think that should be the government’s business,” said, Joseph Dobrian, the Libertarian Party’s candidate for mayor. Dobrian supports neither PlaNYC nor Gennaro’s bill.

“Absolutely not, no way. That’s government gone berserk,” he said.

Tags | Bill Thompson, Carbon, Energy, James Gennaro, Mike Bloomberg, PlaNYC