The Empire State Building has been awarded LEED Gold for Existing Buildings certification as further recognition from the $550 million Empire State ReBuilding program. The Manhattan building is the tallest and most well-known structure in the U.S. to receive LEED certification.

The 2.85 million-square-foot building is celebrating its 80th anniversary while nearing completion of its renewal and repurposing to meet the needs of 21st Century businesses. It is one of a small number of National Historic Landmarks to earn the designation, which was established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute.

The LEED Gold certification follows the ground-breaking creation and implementation of a new replicable, transparent, quantifiable process for economically justified energy efficient retrofits in the existing built environment created a team of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle and the Rocky Mountain Institute. The game-changing analytical model is non-proprietary and open-source and is being replicated at other properties around the world. There is a new focus by government and the real estate industry on investment and return in energy efficiency retrofits driven from the well-documented success of the Empire State Building.

The retrofit conducted by Johnson Controls and Jones Lang LaSalle is guaranteed to reduce the building’s energy consumption by more than 38 percent and should save $4.4 million in energy costs annually.