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Bloomberg Drops an Effort to Cut Building Energy Use

After intense opposition from building owners, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has dropped the most far-reaching initiative of his plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan, which the owners said was too costly, called for all buildings of 50,000 square feet or more to undergo audits to determine which renovations would make them more energy efficient, and for owners to then pay for many of those changes.

The mayor wants to go forward with the proposal to require energy audits, but now is leaving it up to the building owners whether to undertake the changes called for by those audits.

It would have put New York far ahead of other cities in the green-buildings movement. Many cities require that newly constructed buildings be energy efficient, but do not impose those standards on existing properties. Some 22,000 buildings, together accounting for nearly half the square footage in the city, would have been affected.

“It’s another unfunded mandate, and this is just not the time for it,” said Stuart Saft, chairman of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, an opponent of the plan. “Come back in five years when we’re past this recession. At this point it’s just a slap in the face.”

Mr. Bloomberg and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, trumpeted the measure, which they announced on Earth Day, as the key component of “the world’s most comprehensive package” to reduce greenhouse emissions from buildings. It drew praise from former Vice President Al Gore and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.

Mr. Bloomberg had also said the package of bills would create 19,000 construction jobs, for electricians, insulators and others. Administration officials estimated that most of those jobs would still be created by other provisions of the legislation that called for lighting upgrades and inspections of energy systems in buildings to prevent energy waste. But given that the mayor is dropping the most far-reaching component, the legislation is unlikely to result in anywhere near that, others said.

“I’d be shocked if 5,000 of those jobs were created,” said Louis J. Coletti, president and chief executive of the Building Trades Employers’ Association. “The world of real estate and construction financing have been upended by the economic crisis.”

City officials sought to play down the change on Friday, saying the package of bills would still make important strides in energy efficiency.

It would require large commercial buildings to measure and provide information to tenants about individual energy use, which officials say typically results in tenants lowering their use. The legislation would also create the city’s first energy code for all buildings.

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Michael R. Bloomberg, at an environmental-themed event in September, is weakening a package of bills that would cut emissions.Credit...Richard Perry/The New York Times

The original legislation required owners to make any improvements for which the cost could be recouped through declines in energy bills within five years.

Speaker Quinn said that even the scaled-down package of bills was groundbreaking: “Getting to a decent first-round reduction, that’s key for me.”

In New York City, buildings account for 80 percent of total carbon emissions. Mr. Bloomberg has said he wants to reduce the city’s total emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

The City Council is scheduled to take up the package of legislation next Wednesday.

One of its sponsors, James. F. Gennaro, chairman of the Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection, said he expected many property owners would replace windows, upgrade boilers and undertake other improvements on their own. But groups representing building owners said this was unlikely given the difficulties in obtaining bank loans.

“In this climate? Zero chance,” Mr. Saft said. “No one wants to raise the operating costs of the building.”

He said many building owners remained opposed to the mandatory energy audits, whose costs can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Some environmental groups also played down the impact of rescinding the mandatory retrofits, saying that the proposal still has plenty of impact.

“Even though the bill is not as strong, it’s still ahead of the rest of the country,” said Ashok Gupta, director of energy policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York.

Financing became an issue because the bills required about $2.5 billion in private investment in building improvements, and the city only has about $16 million of federal stimulus money available for loans.

Rohit T. Aggarwala, director of the mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said a major sticking point for buildings was that, under some leases, owners who may have paid the upfront costs of retrofitting may not have been able to pass the costs to tenants benefiting from lower electricity bills. Councilman Gennaro said the issue introduced “an element of unfairness and inequitable burden sharing” to the retrofit plan.

But Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said owners were also doubtful of the financial benefits to be had from investing in retrofits.

Mr. Spinola said that his group always supported the goals of the bills in concept and that, with the most burdensome revision out of the way, it now supports their passage of the bills.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayor Shelves Key Initiative On Emissions. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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