"Creating the High Performance City"
Sponsored by the NYC Comptroller's Office

Ed Ott, Director of Public Policy
New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
April 14, 2004

Mr. Ott began his comments by noting that the Central Labor Council is working with the Apollo Project to engage in energy issues after seeing how energy affects every aspect of the City's industries. Apollo is labor's effort to engage in alternate energy and how it can be done and what labor's role will be, he said.

Mr. Ott noted that the earlier panel mentioned the fight over the Trans-Gas power plant in Greenpoint. In general, labor supported siting the plant along the waterfront. There is a tension in the City between access to the waterfront and manufacturing jobs. Now there is a desire for the entire waterfront to be turned into parks and houses. This endangers the City's ability to diversify its economy. The return of manufacturing to the waterfront is an important issue, he asserted.

According to Mr. Ott, people want buildings with every amenity, such as air conditioning, and at the same time no one wants a power plant anywhere near them. In this climate, poor communities have had to bear the burden of fossil-fuel fired power plants and this is grossly unfair. Labor does not have a consolidated position on this issue, he noted.

Mr. Ott noted that now, for labor, high performance buildings do several things. A real discussion is needed between environmental justice groups and labor about how energy production should be done and who bears its burdens. High performance buildings are important in this discussion because of their efficiency and they lend themselves to some very positive things. The housing question in NYC is a key to the City's competitive edge. NYC is perfectly positioned to compete in the global economy, but the cost of housing will drive the working class further out toward the periphery and it increases the cost of labor, Mr. Ott said.

According to Mr. Ott, high performance" housing helps to solve this problem. Let's say that the initial cost of constructing a high performance building is higher than the cost for putting up a conventional building. But, if more high performance buildings get built, the economies of scale will kick in and the start up costs will drop. Building "high performance" also amortizes operating costs and lowers them. However, market forces alone won't increase the number of "high performance" buildings, he noted.

Mr. Ott went on to note that a commitment to high performance allows for a nationwide discussion about the transition from where we are now to where we are going. Unions work to protect what they have; workers are afraid of being discarded by the new. So, the new must invest in retraining re-educating and reusing workers or it will generate its own opposition.

According to Mr. Ott, high performance buildings and alternative energy must be engaged from the point of view of NYC's competitive edge. Efficient cities will be the places most desirable for people to come and invest. NYC can respond to its dependency on the finance industry by making use of the high performance initiative as a means of beginning to diversify our economy.

Mr. Ott observed that by commitment to high performance NYC can attract manufacturers and suppliers of high performance building materials and technologies and get them closer to the City. The role of government is to develop the commitment to high performance. One example is the Healthy Schools Initiative that would use high performance technologies. It is government's job to promote commerce and government commitment to building "high performance" would go a long way in this direction. This will attract more high performance developments and begin to bring down building costs, he noted.

Mr. Ott concluded his remarks by noting that the labor movement is traditionally a negotiator - "Make us an offer"