November 17, 2023

Manhattan School of Music was recently featured on CBS-TV due to the School’s considerable annual energy savings thanks to upgrades with energy utility Con Edison. The savings are equivalent to the amount of energy that 96 individual homes would consume over the course of one year.

CBS-TV’s on-campus reporting included interviews with MSM Associate Vice President for Facilities and Campus Safety Bryan Greaney and MSM classical voice student Evelyn Lehmann.

The news has also been featured by several music media outlets, including The Violin Channel, Musical America, The Strad, and OperaWire.

MSM has made significant strides with its energy efficiency measures, which have resulted in the School reducing its energy use by about 700,000 kilowatt hours — or $140,000 worth of energy — each year.

The savings came about through a partnership with Con Edison, which subsidized half of the $1 million investment required to bring the project to fruition. The project’s initiatives focused on the installation of LED lighting and occupancy sensors in all parts of the School as well as upgrades to the HVAC and condenser systems.

The power saved each year as a result of the upgrades is equivalent to the amount of energy that 96 individual homes would consume.

“We knew what our benchmarks were, and we knew what our targets had to be, and we knew that we were not there yet,” Mr. Greaney told CBS-TV. “We’re going down over 700,000 kilowatt hours per year throughout this building, which equates to about $140,000 annually. It did end up working out much more favorably than we were originally expecting.”

“Even if it’s not a situation where you can do it all at once, finding those opportunities to do even smaller projects can reap really great benefits,” Greaney added.