By GREGORY ZELLER //
A regional stalwart of environmental science will lead an ambitious – and well-funded – climate solutions center in New York City.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that Stony Brook University has been selected as the anchor institution for The New York Climate Exchange, a world-class research-and-development center assembling on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor.
The unprecedented international center – funded primarily by a $100 million matching grant from the Simons Foundation and a $50 million contribution from Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – will leverage high-level partnerships to develop and deploy “dynamic solutions to our global climate crisis,” according to an SBU statement, while serving as an educational hub promoting the new tools and techniques propelling the rapidly evolving green economy.
An impressive alliance of public and private institutions has thrown its collective weight behind The Exchange, including more than 50 major-league universities, national laboratories, corporate giants, business-development groups and grassroots nonprofits.
Looking ahead: A Skidmore, Owings & Merrill rendition of The Exchange, where the future will always be in play.
They’re all backing a unique “living laboratory,” envisioned as more than 400,000 square feet of research labs, classroom spaces, greenhouses, green-design office spaces, net-zero exhibition areas and other sustainable spaces, all designed to promote research into a wide range of ecologically friendly sciences.
Leading the programming will be a Research and Technology Accelerator designed to push new discoveries toward commercialization, while new workforce-development opportunities will also play large – with special attention paid to communities “disproportionately affected by climate change,” according to SBU.
Brookhaven National Laboratory, IBM and New York University are just some of the corporate and academic partners who have already signed on, with a bevy of green-job training and skills-building sessions in the works.
Meanwhile, the center itself – designed by Illinois-based architectural and planning firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill – will serve as a model for urban sustainability, boasting a net-zero infrastructure that “complements the natural landscape of Governors Island and the urban landscape of New York City,” SBU said Monday.
Maurie McInnis: Global crisis management.
Among the environmentally sound practices built into the infrastructure: coveted TRUE Zero Waste certification (diverting 95 percent of facility waste away from landfills), on-site solar electrical generation and battery storage and built-in systems that meet 100 percent of non-potable water demand with rainwater and treated wastewater.
Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis said her school – which has already reached out to Duke University, the University of Oxford, the American Museum of Natural History and other international institutions for collaborations and contributions benefitting The Exchange – was “honored, excited and proud” to anchor the Governor’s Island effort, which will “cement New York City as the world leader on climate change, the most pressing issue of our time.”
“The development of climate solutions has been siloed, with world leaders separate from expert scientists separate from the on-the-ground green workforce,” McInnis noted. “As an international leader on climate and as the leading public research institution in New York, Stony Brook University will bring stakeholders together from the academic, government and business communities to make the Climate Exchange the center of research, innovation, education and collaboration to address this global crisis.”
