The City of Houston has embarked on a project to improve the energy efficiency of 271 City buildings.
Mayor Bill White and the Houston City Council have signed a contract with Siemens (NYSE: SI) and T.A.C. committing approximately 11 million square feet to the Clinton Climate Initiative’s (CCI) Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program.
CCI’s Building Retrofit Program brings together many of the world’s largest energy service companies, financial institutions, and cities in an effort to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings across the municipal, private, commercial, educational, and public housing sectors.
Houston is a member of the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, an association of large cities around the world that have pledged to accelerate their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The City of Houston’s building retrofit program is currently the largest-scale project among the participating cities, and Houston is the first North American city to sign contracts and begin work on its City facilities.
The retrofit program will include 100 fire stations, 81 police stations, 34 health facilities, 5 Convention and Entertainment facilities, 40 libraries, 1 Municipal Court, and 10 general office facilities.
Retrofit components and applications may include: lighting, space heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, building envelopes, heat recovery, energy and water management systems, environmental system controls, motors, domestic water heating, fuel switching, air distribution systems, water distribution/metering or other energy/water related improvements; e.g., utility rate improvements and renewable energy, to name a few.
The City anticipates a greater than 20% reduction in annual utility and operating costs through the implementation of this energy efficiency and utility conservation retrofit program. This is a multi-year contract that is expected to result in millions of dollars in savings over several years and eliminate 68,000 tons of CO2 from our air annually.
In Related News…
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged delegates at the C40 conference in Hong Kong to wield the power of its large collective population to promote the use of electric taxis, among other initiatives.
Bloomberg took over leadership of the global coalition this week.
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