eea title card

By Jay Fox

Ettinger Engineering Associates (EEA) is a full-service consulting firm, with MEP, fire protection, sustainability, commissioning, civil, and field verification all housed under the same roof. Founded in 1960, the firm has worked on nearly a thousand projects, including numerous high-performance and Passive House-certified buildings. EEA’s staff includes professionals certified in both Passive House Institute (PHI) and Phius, supported by a full-service sustainability practice with expertise across a broad range of high-performance building standards and certification programs. EEA have demonstrated fluency in the language of Passive House standards, sustainability, and circular systems, but they have always been grounded in the fundamentals of mechanical engineering and mindful of the challenges associated with building in New York City and the Tri-State area. Their decades of experience allow them to thrive when interdisciplinary coordination is necessary, particularly on large-scale, high-performance projects that regularly require years of planning and proper schedule management to meet goals and remain on budget. EEA’s range of services means they can remain involved from early modeling through construction, commissioning, and verification, serving as an anchor of continuity throughout the course of even the most challenging project.

Background photo of Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Plaza.
Background photo of Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Plaza.

More than just a leading MEP consultant for the Tri-State area, EEA provides numerous services typically managed by sustainability consultants or independent civil engineering firms. The firm has guided project teams through third-party certification processes for PHI, Phius, LEED, ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities, the WELL Building Standard, Fitwel, DOE Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH), and other high-performance building programs. For projects based in New York City, EEA can take the lead on issues of compliance and navigate projects through the city’s increasingly rigorous regulatory environment, particularly with respect to Local Law 97. They also work out in the field, performing verifications and the full range of special inspections covered by Chapter 17 in the New York City Building Code. EEA’s expertise extends beyond the five boroughs. A case in point is Mount Vernon, New York, where EEA is under contract with the city to perform inspections on behalf of its Department of Buildings.

For those who want to participate in incentive programs through public utilities or state-run competitions like the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Buildings of Excellence program, EEA offers a host of services to direct and manage teams from the application process through construction and even verification. To date, EEA has worked on four buildings that have received a Buildings of Excellence Award as demonstration projects: Court Square (Round 2), Variety Boys & Girls Club (Round 3), Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Plaza (Round 4), and Powerhouse Apartments (Round 5). They also received Early Design Support through the Buildings of Excellence Program for Ilse Hoffman House.

EEA’s commitment to engineering fundamentals and sustainable design is only part of the reason for their success. They also have the capacity to manage complex work that is typically spread across a host of consultants (e.g., civil, MEP, sustainability, Passive House), each with their own specialty and discipline. At EEA, every one of those disciplines, including low-voltage design and civil engineering, lives inside the same firm, working off the same BIM model, resolving clashes between systems on screen before the first shovel hits the dirt. It's a small structural difference with an outsized effect: the coordination that usually happens in a chain of emails between firms happens instead across a hallway, which can have major implications for Passive House buildings, where a single unresolved thermal bridge or a mis-sized duct run becomes a real threat to certification. This is what keeps them busy across the Tri-State area with clients ranging from architects and developers to municipal agencies and fellow engineers.

Look Inside
boe website r5 powerhouse apartments

Powerhouse Apartments

Powerhouse Apartments is breaking new ground in more ways than one. The 351 Powers Avenue development in Mott Haven became the first project in New York City to receive approval through the City’s new Expedited Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP), completing in 90 days a process that would typically take roughly seven months. The project will transform a City-owned parking lot into an eight-story, 100% affordable development with 84 homes, including 30 for formerly homeless New Yorkers, while also providing a community theater, workforce development space, and more than 6,400 square feet of outdoor green space.

EEA is helping the project pair this ambitious social mission with an equally ambitious approach to building performance. Designed as an all-electric Passive House building, Powerhouse will use a centralized ground-source heat pump system for heating, cooling, and domestic hot water, complemented by a high-performance envelope and triple-pane windows. The project is pursuing Passive House certification along with ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities, DOE Zero Energy Ready Home, EPA Indoor airPLUS, Fitwel, and WELL, while exploring natural materials and strategies to reduce embodied carbon. The development is also part of a City pilot incorporating the NYC Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines to address extreme heat, heavy precipitation, and carbon emissions.

One of the most critical roles that EEA has played is integrating various ECMs into a single decision-making framework including energy/OPEX modeling, preliminary design narratives/sketches, hard-cost estimates, payback and NPV. They used that to optimize decisions across both MEP and sustainability, including GSHP, Passive House, PV racking/layout and other energy measures. "Having that financial grounding also allowed the team to intelligently pursue measures without direct payback, including embodied-carbon reductions," said Managing Principal Ed Ettinger.

True to its name, Powerhouse is being designed not only for efficiency, but for resilience. EEA is involved in the design of the building’s substantial onsite photovoltaic array and battery energy storage system, which is intended to maintain critical loads during a grid outage. The mechanical ventilation system is also designed to remain operational in designated areas of refuge during a loss of power, helping protect residents during an emergency.

Powerhouse Apartments is being designed by EEA in collaboration with STAT Architecture and is being developed by Lemle & Wolff Development Co., HELP Development Corp., and True Development New York. The team is creating a project that brings affordable housing, community space, high-performance design, and energy resilience together under one roof, while setting a precedent for how New York City can deliver projects like it more quickly.

Look Inside
boe website 36 ilse hoffman house eds

Ilse Hoffman House

At 14 stories and nearly 124,000 square feet, Ilse Hoffman House represents a significant new investment in affordable and supportive housing in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. The development will provide 175 residences and is designed by EEA in collaboration with architect Urban Architectural Initiatives, owner ACMH, and developer Artemis Development. More than simply adding housing, the project is designed to pair long-term affordability with a high standard of building performance, comfort, and occupant health.

Ilse Hoffman House is being designed as an all-electric, high-performance building that combines efficient mechanical systems with a robust enclosure, rooftop solar, energy recovery ventilation, passive cooling strategies, and resilient building systems. The project was selected for NYSERDA’s Buildings of Excellence Early Design Support Program, allowing the team to study Passive House feasibility, HVAC system optimization, ground-source heat pump feasibility, embodied carbon, refrigerant impacts, material sourcing, and strategies for improving indoor air quality. The project is also pursuing Enterprise Green Communities, ENERGY STAR Multifamily New Construction, EPA Indoor airPLUS, and WELL standards. Together, these strategies are intended to create a healthier, quieter, lower-carbon, and more resilient home for residents while demonstrating how supportive and affordable housing can also advance New York’s goals for high-performance, carbon-neutral buildings.

Ettinger notes that EEA used a similar integrated process as with Powerhouse, but with even greater emphasis on embodied carbon. "Because that space remains relatively unstandardized, we established a project-specific baseline and used EC3/Tally softwares to identify and pursue reductions. We believe that work materially informed design decisions and purchasing/supply-chain choices and helped advance a more repeatable approach to embodied-carbon reduction as those requirements begin to emerge more broadly in HPD/EGC and the industry," he said.

Accelerator Partners are Passive House practitioners who share our commitment to building better, building cleaner, and sharing knowledge about Passive House methodologies with wider audiences. They allow us to reach new builders, developers, architects, and policymakers who want the benefits associated with Passive House construction (lower energy bills, a continuous supply of filtered air, more durable construction, and happier occupants!), but have yet to learn that there are passive design principles and established, performance-based building standards that can provide them.

If you want to learn how to become an Accelerator Partner, please email [email protected] to see how you can help us accelerate the wider adoption of passive design and construction.

Learn More About Ettinger Engineering

Published: August 24, 2026
Author: Jay Fox
Categories: Article, News