MAXIMIZING BUILDING PERFORMANCE THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES
Buildings Magazine July 7, 2003 -- Federal Mandate, City Initiative Citizens of Houston are well aware of the city’s non-compliance with federal ozone standards. For the professionals providing operations and daily maintenance to the approximately 5.26 million square feet of owned and leased City of Houston facilities, energy consumption and the reduction of NOx emissions is a BIG priority. “We have to report to state agencies the efforts we are taking to reduce energy [consumption] by five percent every year, for the next five years,” explains Tanwir Badar, deputy assistant director, Energy & Environmental Division, General Services Department, City of Houston.
The aggressive goals put in place by the State of Texas’ environmental agency, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Committee, are aimed at bringing the city into compliance by 2007. The environmentally friendly (and energy-efficient) initiatives the city’s General Services Department has undertaken seek to lessen the impact of over 200 city buildings on the environment. Compliance with federal mandates isn’t the only motivation for greening city buildings. “We’re telling our people that when a firm like Gerald Hines’ goes green, then it just makes sense. If commercial developers decide that green is the way to go, then obviously they’re looking at the bottom dollar - and if they can do that, then obviously the city can do that,” explains Eugene M. Inouye, assistant director, Selections and Standards Section, Design & Construction Division, General Services Department, City of Houston.
After discovering the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) LEED rating system, Inouye is convinced of its usefulness in city buildings. “Nothing really got my attention until LEED came into being. I started attending some of these seminars and immediately saw the value to the city,” he says. “We’ve just recently begun mandating to our project managers that we’re going green. That has only been in effect for a couple of months, so not all of our projects are going green initially, but we have asked that all specifications incorporate those requirements.”
For two years now, the General Services Department has been using cool roof technologies. “We are shooting for somewhere around 50- to 70-percent reflectance so that the heat is not absorbed into the building, having a cooler effect,” Badar explains.
New buildings will also have higher R-value insulation installed. Retrofitting lamps with more efficient technology is another of the city’s energy reduction strategies. Paired with occupancy sensors tied into building HVAC, the savings really add up.
According to Badar, “There are continuous improvements being done in the building environment in order to save energy. When you save energy, you get an environmentally green building.”
