Siemens, TAC Americas Partner with Houston to Slash Energy Use in City Buildings

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HOUSTON, Texas -- Siemens and TAC Americas, leaders in energy solutions and management systems, are poised to help Houston with green retrofits for 271 city buildings — some 11 million square feet of public space.

Houston is one of 40 major cities working with the Clinton Climate Initiative to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and is the first U.S. city to move ahead with work under the initiative's Large Buildings Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program.

Siemens Building Technologies and TAC Americas, which signed agreements with Houston in June, are now each auditing about 5.5 million square feet of municipal space to propose efficiency measures for city consideration, Houston spokesman Frank Michel said.

Retrofit and improvement proposals that meet city approval are expected to reduce energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent in each building, Michel said in a statement provided to GreenerBuildings.

George R. Brown Convention Center

The measures being explored include lighting, HVAC and automated control systems as well as chiller upgrades and long-term strategies. Michel said.

The retrofit program is the latest of the city's efforts to make its facilities and operations more environmentally friendly.

Houston's programs in the past four years include work to make at least half of the city's non-emergency fleet green vehicles by 2010 (they now have 417 hybrids), a stepped-up recycling and anti-dumping initiative and installation of  high-tech cameras and acquisition of a mobile unit to monitor and enforce the city's clean air regulations.

Progress this year has included contracting more than 350 million kWh of renewable energy — the largest purchase of any U.S. city — and installation of solar panels on an annex to Houston's City Hall and on its code enforcement building.

On Monday, the city said that the philanthropic organization Houston Endowment Inc. would provide an $850,000 grant to help fund a $1 million-plus pilot project that calls for installing a 100-kW solar power system on the 16-acre roof of the George R. Brown Convention Center. Located in downtown Houston, the vast center encompasses 1.85 million gross square feet. Since July, all the energy used to power the building has come from the city's purchase of renewable energy.

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