Money handlers, that's what these enormous buildings were for. And at this point in time with our use of a fiat currency, money is just a digital construct. So what is the need for having a physical space to house all of these people booting up their computers and networking and playing around with these numbers in a virtual environment? Perhaps at one time when computers were not a thing it would be necessary to collect those types into a consolidated area for the purpose of communication and organization, but we are no longer at the mercy of physical proximity being necessary for that. We continue to utilize these structures and maintain this method of worker placement and organization past their relevance, for seemingly no other reason than perpetuating an archetype of the "business building". Why else would there be a need to have these monuments to the conquerors of finance?
Goldman Sachs maintains them as monuments so that we continue to look upon them as monuments, and the institutions they represent as being deserving of such reverence. They never turn off the lights because they can, not because they need to.
"You see great works — statues, buildings, machines, books, and you feel belittled by them, put in your place, puny, unworthy. But you're looking at it all wrong. Their greatness awaits your judgment. Emerson wrote, "The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settled its claims to praise."
Networking, knowledge sharing, consensus building and control are all indispensable to running a business like that. Having a physical shared space is indispensable for them. I'd argue that it's necessary to maintain a company culture at a certain scale as well.
People on $200,000 left a 5 cent light on pp? Meh.
You could work on using that $200,000 more efficiently if you want to save money.
I think you are falling for the stupid marketing. Wow we pulled 100 cars worth off the road by turning lights off at night! (as a one million car per year organization)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_Bank_Street
Hope that someone here knows the price of lightning so we can get some comparison going on :D
Probably depends on who pays the power bill. Maybe some commercial leases include power ? Also, in NYC a lot of people work insane hours, so even one person staying till 9 or 10pm pretty much requires all the lights to be on. The housekeeping staff usually start about 7-8pm and assuming an 8 hour shift, thats 2-3am at least that they'll be there.
Overall I bet lights are a very small fraction of a building's electrical bill. Think of an elevator and how many amps it requires to power a motor the size of small car lifting 900+lbs of people 30+ stories all day. One guy going to the top floor probably uses enough power to light the building for half a day.