Let’s frame this assessment with the latest figures on New York City’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The newest emissions inventory contains 2009 data, with Citywide and municipal GHG numbers declining 4.2% and 3.5% respectively from the previous year. [i] The inventory attributes declines largely to lower carbon intensity of the electric power supply. Put simply, this means less coal was burned to make electricity consumed in New York City last year. Reductions in our per person consumption of electricity and fuel were offset, however, by increased GHG emissions due to population growth and continued expansion of the City’s building stock.

Now the City can shrink its carbon footprint by expanding its energy efficiency and tuning up the operation of the buildings already on its iconic skyline. Just like the Statue of Liberty, New York now can shine its light as the gateway to a world of sustainable cities.

Readers are rarely surprised to find look-back and look-ahead musings in December's media. My final Torchlight of the year honors this tradition, although, with the very notable exception of the green building legislation, the issues most closely tracked during 2009 may lack closure or even legible milestones.

Buildings with glass skins proliferated and became icons of modernity decades before concerns over climate change and the geo-politics oil and natural gas became defining issues of our time although New York's late-lamented building boom made it transparently clear that shrinking the carbon footprint and easing the energy demands of our built environment simply weren't market-transforming forces. Even the impact of LEED, Energy Star, and other standards of high performance architecture exist more as the exceptions than the rules in our built environment. But a March 2009 panel at the New York Academy of Sciences shone a bright inquiring light onto the possibility that it's time to retire the glass-facade building as both icon and business-as-usual. The panel delved into questions like: can glass buildings be comfortable for occupants without the need for additional energy-intensive mechanical systems? If a glass facade building can meet current energy code requirements, is there a problem with the energy code? Do building professionals see emerging glass technologies that can cut deeply into building energy use? Put bluntly, can any glass building be green enough?