Hi-Rises Use Ice to Cool Buildings

Al Gore has become the champion of climate change and global warming. His movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth' was well received as an authentic expose into the perils of global warming both domestically and abroad. Evidently, executives at Credit Suisse in New York City have bought into the fact that they can make a difference.

If you visit their building in downtown Manhattan, you will find one of the most unique cooling method innovations in use today. Ice. In an alternative to the power grid drain that happens in New York City every summer and the ongoing impact of pollution, Credit Suisse is using a cooling system that uses fans to blow cool air off of huge blocks of ice to cool its high rise building.

Here is how it works. Ice is frozen at night when the amount of power being used is significantly less. The ice is contained in large silver drums. As the day begins and the ice begins to melt, the cool air rising from the ice is pushed through a ventilation system into the offices in the building. At the end of the day, the melted water is recycled all over again to be refrozen to be used the next day. Ice storage as it is called is used to cool the 1.9 million square feet of space in the Credit Suisse's building. In the basement, three cooling rooms contain sixty-four of the silver containers. These containers have a capacity to hold eight hundred gallons of water a piece.

The ice storage system decreases the amount of power impact by over 900 kilowatts and 2.15 million kilowatt hours annually. That is enough power for two hundred homes. The effect is like removing 223 cars off the road or planting almost two million trees needed to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted from the electrical use released by buildings in the most concrete-centered city in the world. It is this degree of innovation that states like New York are looking to implement on a larger scale. The climate change prospect is immeasurable in urban cities where the majority of emissions is derived from the operations of buildings.

Credit Suisse is not alone. Morgan Stanley's offices in Westchester County have had an ice cooling system recently installed as well. That storage system will save over 740 kilowatts daily and 900,000 annually. Trane who built both systems recently installed a similar system for Morgan Stanley's offices on Fifth Avenue in the heart of Manhattan. Goldman Sachs who is constructing a new headquarters in the financial district will also have an ice storage cooling system in their new building.

At a cost of $3,000,000 implementing such a system is not an inexpensive decision. But with rebates and incentives from the New York Energy Research and Development Authority, companies are making the improvements. The agency is looking to decrease the amount of power grid usage while helping businesses reduce their energy costs. Construction of the systems takes about four months and requires a sizable amount of space for the current design to work.

Even though the current system is designed for large corporations with huge complexes, such technology will be adaptable on a smaller scale in the near future as companies like Trane, which is owned by American Standard look to develop efficiency cooling and heating systems that will have negligible impact on power grids in cities like New York and London.

With companies weighing the cost-savings as well as the impact on the environment, ice storage cooling systems will increase. With 3,000 in use today, companies are already seeing the benefits. As more companies look to become green companies, that is companies acting responsibly towards the environment, other such innovations will be designed and installed across the country. With New York City as a focal point because of its pull on the power grid and the amount of energy expended on a daily basis heating and cooling the nation's most populated city and hub of corporate America, it will become the standard for what can be accomplished as social responsibility with the environment and return on investments make such systems a no-brainer for executives across the land.

Al Gore would be proud.