Energy / Dallas, Texas: Smarter City 2010 - Energy

Surprised? You’re not alone.

“Dallas is a very conservative city, a very business-oriented city. A large part of their success is that they seemed to come from nowhere,” says Kate Robertson, Energy Efficiency Specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund’s Texas office. “There is definitely a business incentive for energy efficiency here.” 

To be sure, Dallas hasn’t solved all of its environmental problems. Hot Texas summers and plenty of cars, trucks and industry give the area a chronic air pollution problem. But the city of Dallas, in partnership with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has responded to air quality and global warming concerns with an array of energy initiatives that would be impressive even in cities with a greener reputation.

In 2005, Dallas commissioned an inventory of both municipal and citywide greenhouse gas emissions.  While the municipality itself was found to have a relatively small footprint—about 3.5 percent of total emissions—the inventory prompted city government to serve as a model for reductions in the private sector.

So far, Dallas has undertaken four energy overhauls in major city buildings, from City Hall to the Convention Center to the Dallas Museum of Art. The upgrades, including new chillers and boilers, solar panel installations and automated controls for HVAC and lighting systems, are not unique to Dallas, explains Jesse Dillard, Energy Manager for the municipal government—but together they save the city $5.8 million a year, and serve as a model of state-of-the-art green technology for private developers.

Dallas taxpayers have benefited from these upgrades with surprisingly little extra investment. In a financing scheme called performance management contracting, the city pays its contractors through the energy savings that result from their work, rather than through traditional bonds. For instance, a $3 million renovation that results in $500,000 annual savings could be paid off over six years with money that was previously earmarked for energy costs.

Dillard says that performance management contracting works because it gives contractors an incentive to keep their promises. If a project doesn’t yield its expected energy savings, the contractor loses profit. In fact, all of Dallas’s performance management projects have exceeded their projected energy savings, and the city has more in the works.

The city’s energy overhauls are having a noticeable effect—every year for the past five years, city government has reduced its energy consumption by at least five percent. Meanwhile, citywide energy consumption also dipped from 2004 to 2008, the last year in which data was available. Dallas’s Office of Environmental Quality is currently drafting a Sustainability Plan to set specific energy and greenhouse emissions targets for the coming years.