Urban housing & energy efficiency: a pollution prevention opportunity

Abstract

Abstract In 1999, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) received the annual Governor's Award for Pollution Prevention for its Energy Efficiency Refrigerator Replacement Program, conducted in cooperation with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). There are over 180,000 refrigerators in operation at NYCHA residences. In this article the authors describe how NYPA offered to design, finance and implement a program to replace inefficient refrigerators with more efficient models, recouping the cost of the program through energy savings. NYPA worked in partnership with major appliance manufacturers to develop refrigerators that fit the NYCHA space requirements while providing sufficient energy savings to pay for the program. In addition, refrigerant gas, compressor oil, mercury switches, PCB- and non-PCB capacitors, and metals are all recycled at a dedicated facility under the program; the shipping containers from the new refrigerators are also recycled. Since program inception, almost 48,000 refrigerators have been replaced, weighing an estimated 8.5 million pounds. To date, the program has recycled approximately 14,000 pounds of CFC-12 gas, 215,000 pounds of aluminum, 36,000 pounds of copper, and eight million pounds of steel. From an energy efficiency standpoint, energy consumption has been reduced by 62,000 MWH, which has eliminated air emissions totaling ninety-five tons of SO2, seventy-eight tons of NOx and 52,000 tons of CO2 (using metropolitan New York generation profiles). Likewise, partnerships have been developed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Energy.