NEW YORK CITY — Manhattan is teeming with skyscrapers that seem to reach into the clouds. But a gleaming commercial building near the Hudson River is more impressive for how it stretches down into the dirt.
Beneath the floors of 555 Greenwich St. are 68 geothermal energy piles that run nearly 120 feet deep, dodging utility pipes and tunnels that crisscross the busy urban underground. During the sweltering summer, the long vertical piles collect heat from the 16-story building and dump it into the earth, cooling the offices above. In the chillier months, the equipment retrieves that warmth to keep the rooms cozy.
The geothermal system is a key reason why 555 Greenwich can operate without using fossil fuels, making it the city’s first commercial office building to hit that milestone. That’s according to the owner, Hudson Square Properties, which is a joint venture of the real estate company Hines, Trinity Church NYC, and the investment arm of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
The building, which finished construction in 2023, should be able to meet half of its heating and cooling needs from geothermal when fully occupied, said Jason Alderman, senior managing director and head of New York at Hines. The other half will be met primarily by the two enormous air-source heat pumps sitting on the rooftop, which overlooks the city’s most iconic towers and the green edges of Central Park.
When I visited the 270,000-square-foot property in early June, Alderman explained that the fossil fuel–free building is a reflection of both New York City’s aggressive climate change policies and the partners’ own ambitions for a highly efficient, carbon-cutting design.
“We wanted to think outside of the box and help set the standard for what others can do,” he said.
We were standing beside the only visible part of the geothermal system: an array of small, dusty pipes peeking out from the partially finished floor of a forthcoming restaurant. In a nearby utility room, I saw control boxes managed by the company Endurant Energy, which monitors temperatures in the underground geothermal piles to determine whether it’s more efficient for the building to grab heat from the earth or run the heat pumps on the roof.
On days when the geothermal setup can produce more energy than needed, it pipes the excess heat directly into its sister property, a nearly century-old Art Deco edifice on 345 Hudson St. The developers recently renovated the older building and combined it with 555 Greenwich to make a single 1.2-million-square-foot office complex in lower Manhattan.
The newer property uses 40% less energy than typical top-quality office buildings and well exceeds New York City’s 2030 climate targets, according to its owners. The older property, which is still transitioning to an all-electric energy system, is on track to reduce its carbon emissions by 90% within the next decade.
As NYC greens its buildings, the state backtracks on climate
Geothermal heating and cooling systems are steadily proliferating beneath the city’s newest buildings, despite the complex engineering challenges and expensive installation costs. Property owners are looking to not just comply with regulations but also to generate long-term energy savings by avoiding natural gas.
Buildings account for more than two-thirds of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2019, city leaders have adopted laws to rein in that planet-warming pollution.
Local Law 154 prohibits the use of fossil fuels in most new construction and will start applying to high-rise buildings in 2027. Local Law 97 requires most buildings over 25,000 square feet, whether new or old, to meet escalating energy-efficiency and emissions standards, with stricter limits set to take effect in 2030.
The city’s deadlines are approaching at a time when New York state is abandoning its most ambitious climate targets. In late May, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed a budget bill that effectively vaporizes a 2030 mandate to curb statewide emissions by 40% from 1990 levels, replacing the target with a watered-down goal that critics fear will slow the state’s buildout of clean energy technologies.
