New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that eight New York State hospitals will receive a combined nearly $28 million for six projects to advance energy efficiency and electrification. These investments through the Empire Building Challenge: Hospitals Program administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) seek to affordably modernize facilities, reduce energy use and lower emissions.
“These awards will help ensure our hospitals continue to provide New Yorkers critical access to medical care while maintaining our commitment to the clean energy transition,” Hochul said. “These investments allow them to operate more efficiently, manage rising costs and focus their resources on what matters most: providing quality care to patients and communities.”
The Empire Building Challenge: Hospitals (EBC: Hospitals) Program competitively awards funding to projects that demonstrate pathways for hospitals to overcome cost barriers and challenges to energy-saving investments while improving the resiliency of healthcare facilities. The selected projects span eight in-patient healthcare facilities, six of which are located in disadvantaged communities.
The six projects granted awards are:
- Finger Lakes Health-Geneva General Hospital, in Geneva, which was awarded more than $3.5 million to install a new high efficiency cooling plant, update the central building management system, replace two aging air handling units with higher efficiency models, and upgrade a chiller plant by adding a heat recovery chiller.
- Long Island Jewish Medical Center-Katz Women’s Hospital in Queens, which was awarded nearly $4.3 million to install a heat recovery chiller and an exhaust air heat recovery system, convert steam distribution to low-temperature hot water (LTHW), and balance the facility ventilation system.
- Montefiore Medical Center’s Wakefield Hospital, Jack D. Weiler Hospital, and Westchester Square, in the Bronx, which was awarded nearly $4.9 million to electrify hospital heating by installing heat recovery heat pumps in three hospitals.
- Northwell Health-Phelps Memorial Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, which was awarded more than $5 million to install a heat recovery chiller, heat pumps, and a thermal storage system, and convert steam distribution to LTHW.
- NYC Health + Hospitals-Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, which was awarded more than $5 million to install new heat pump chillers, modernize pneumatic controls, and upgrade the central building management system.
- SBH Health System-St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, which was awarded more than $5 million to electrify fossil fuel loads by replacing an existing steam chiller plant with an electric chiller plant.
NYSERDA’s EBC: Hospitals Program is an extension of the state’s Empire Building Challenge, which supported and demonstrated replicable, economically feasible, and scalable low carbon retrofit approaches in large existing buildings.
“The EBC: Hospitals Program shows how improving building performance through clean energy technologies is directly connected to the well-being and safety of the patients and communities they serve while achieving necessary cost savings and accelerating New York’s clean energy transition,” said NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen M. Harris
The awards are funded through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Clean Energy Fund (CEF).
