The first all-electric building in the city, standing 44-stories tall at 505 State St. in downtown Brooklyn, is set for tenants to move in this April.


What You Need To Know

  • The apartment building at 505 State St. in Brooklyn will be the first all-electric building in New York

  • Environmental laws that require new buildings to run on electricity and existing buildings to reduce emissions are taking effect this year

  • Former Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke to environmental advocates about the laws he signed while in office

"In addition to not combusting fossil fuels on premise, being the first all-electric building, we’re also sourcing 100% of the electricity from renewable sources in the New York City area, primarily from community solar,” David McCarty, vice president of Alloy, said.

So it was a fitting place for environmental groups and elected officials to celebrate new laws aimed at cutting building emissions taking effect this year — one that requires most new buildings to be emissions free and one requiring existing large buildings to cut down on emissions.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who signed them into law, joined the celebration.

“It was a people’s movement that led to these laws being passed,” he told the environmental advocates who attended.

It was up to the Adams administration to write the rules for the law on buildings cutting emissions — that led to criticism from some lawmakers who felt the rules watered down the law.

That may lead the City Council to draft new laws.

“My concern [is] that buildings are going to buy their way out of reducing their emissions caused by their electricity,” Councilman Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn Democrat, said. “We want them to actually invest in reducing their emissions.”

The idea for an all-electric building was born from necessity, McCarty said. The National Grid had stopped providing new gas hook-ups over a fight with the state over a pipeline.

“It encouraged us and pushed us to try to explore something that had never been done before,” he said.

McCarty hopes developers take that approach as these new building emission laws take effect.

“My hope for it is that the development community embraces it in a way and that we as New York City developers and property owners can be at the forefront nationally [in] how we decarbonize our building stock,” he said.