The building opened without them – despite being required in the original agreement. While towers three and four have new fuel cells, the main tower’s have never been replaced. Hurricane Sandy left most of lower Manhattan without power in 2012 – and flooding destroyed the fuel cells for the new World Trade Center. What was unreported, though, was that the flood also destroyed all nine fuel cells. Around 200m gallons of water cascaded into the lower levels of the site, putting the National September 11 Memorial Museum under at least five feet of water, according to the New York Times. In tower one the fuel cells would provide up to 10% of the building’s electricity, according to the fuel cell manufacturer in towers three and four they would supply 30%. They’re cleaner because they don’t emit greenhouse gases or soot: the heat and water they generate as a byproduct can be used for cooling and heating the tower.Īnd so, in 2008, the port authority helped to orchestrate a $10.6m deal with Connecticut’s UTC Power to provide nine fuel cells to supply power to three main towers, including One World Trade. “Every day is earth day at the World Trade Center,” claimed the port authority.Īnother requirement in the agreement was the installation of fuel cells, which work by converting natural gas into electricity using an energy-efficient electrochemical process, rather than by burning it. The World Trade Center’s towers would be required to attain LEED gold certification, achieve net-zero CO 2 emissions (by purchasing green-energy credits) and operate with at least 20% more energy efficiency than the state’s current building code. In 2007, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a state agency created in the aftermath of 9/11 to coordinate rebuilding efforts, introduced aggressive green standards for the tower and its surrounding complex that were “unprecedented in their scope and depth”, according to the building’s architects. What happened in the basement of One World Trade Center after Sandy is an untold – and as yet unresolved – chapter in the site’s redevelopment, already dogged by false starts, political squabbling and cost overruns, and involving some of the biggest names in New York City’s corporate real estate. Superstorm Sandy damaged the building’s $10.6m (£6.8m) clean-power sources – those world-class fuel cells – a third of which went unrepaired and unreplaced because of a costly flaw in the main tower’s design and pressure to honour a billion-dollar deal with Condé Nast, the global publisher and the building’s anchor tenant. Paterson, praised this “space-age energy technology”, adding “I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important”.Ī 26-page trove of internal documents obtained by Climate Desk from the port authority reveals for the first time a substantial hit to the project’s green credibility. In 2008 the governor of New York, David A. One World Trade Center has lighting that reacts to sunshine, rain harvesting and a state-of-the-art fuel cell installation, one of the largest of its kind in the world. And it’s also supposed to be one of the greenest – a first on its scale to aim for the US Green Building Council’s LEED gold certification, a coveted prize for sustainable building design. The tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere. The brilliant blue-silver facade glints no matter where you are in the city – nothing less than a “beacon of hope, just like the Statue of Liberty,” says the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the site in a joint venture with the Durst Organization, a property business. One World Trade Center, or the “Freedom Tower,” as it was formerly known, soars above New York City, filling a void left by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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