Serious Materials, a California based company that specializes in re-fabricating glass to make super-insulating glass units (IGU's) was contracted by Johnson Controls to refurbish 6,514 windows of the Empire State Building. Serious Materials set up shop within the iconic building where they fabricated the IGU's using 96% of the already existing glass/frames. The IGU's have four times greater thermal efficiency than the previous dual pane windows and will reduce solar heat gain by 50%. Serious Material's process of re-fabricating windows allows for their products to cost 3.5 times less than new IGU's.The project is expected to cut the Empire State Building's annual energy costs by $400,000 and is one of many efficiency measures in it's sustainability program. The program has a goal of a 38% decrease in energy consumption by 2025. Such a decrease will save $4.4 million in annual energy costs and 105,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Serious Materials CEO Kevin Surace is originally from Syracuse and studied engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
For more information on Serious Materials visit http://www.seriousmaterials.com/.
For more information on the Empire State Buildings sustainability program visit http://www.esbsustainability.com.
