Houston, TX, Mayor Announces Green Retrofits for 271 City Buildings

Mayor White and the Houston City Council have signed a contract with Siemens and T.A.C. committing 271 City facilities, totalling 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 a landmark effort to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings across the municipal, private, commercial, educational, and public housing sectors.

C40 Member

Houston is a member of the C40 Climate Leadership Group, an association of large cities around the world that have pledged to accelerate their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; CCI serves as the exclusive implementing partner of the C40. 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.

Planned Retrofits

The following types of City facilities will be included in this project:

• 100 fire stations totalling 926,000 square feet
• 81 police stations totalling 2.4 million square feet
• 34 health facilities totalling 1 million square feet
• 5 Convention and Entertainment facilities totalling 3.9 million square feet
• 40 libraries totalling 1 million square feet
• 1 Municipal Courts facility totalling 104,000 square feet
• 10 general office facilities (e.g. City Hall, City Hall Annex, 611 Walker, etc.) totalling 1.6 million square feet

Significant CO2 Reductions

The City anticipates a greater than 20 percent 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 annually.