The City of Dallas is constantly working on being a good environmental steward and doing our share for cleaner air. One way we can improve air quality is by reducing our electrical energy consumption. Equipment and Building Services and the Office of Environmental Management are working with departments to help them develop energy conservation plans. Some examples of the City's energy efficient efforts include examining the air, lighting and control systems at all existing City facilities in an effort to make them more energy efficient

• Aviation Department is currently upgrading and replacing its HVAC system. The more efficient boiler and chillers reduce emissions from the 1998 baseline level.
• Office of Cultural Affairs requires any organizations operating City owned facilities to reduce their utilities expenses by 5% in year one, and maintain that reduction in years 2-5. Those organizations that do not achieve and maintain a 5% reduction will be required to pay the difference for the purposes of calculating a 5% reduction. Office of Cultural Affairs will establish a base from an average utilities cost (based on actual expenditures in the most recently completed fiscal years) per facility. This will only apply to organizations currently operating City owned facilities.
• Dallas Water Utilities is drafting a contract for the sale and/or use of over 1.5 million cubic feet of biogas, mainly methane, produced daily by the Southside Wastewater Treatment anaerobic digesters for significant waste energy recovery (over 6 MW). As a Fuel to generate electricity, Southside's Bio-Gas has the potential to reduce the City's Aggregate Electricity Consumption by more than 5% in one year. In addition, the Southside Wastewater Treatment plant is in the process of replacing 81 surface aerators with a high efficiency fine bubble aeration system with an estimated decrease in energy consumption of about 50%.
  The plant has also completed retrofitting of six anaerobic digesters with a liquid jet mix system and replaced the majority of incandescent lighting with energy-efficient fluorescent lighting resulting in substantial decrease in energy use. The new Ozone Generation facility currently under construction at the East Side Water Treatment Plant will reduce power cost by $500K a year.
  Dallas Water Utilities is continuing to restructure plant operations to reduce energy consumption:
• by operating pumping units at higher wet well levels;
• shift re-organization aimed for the eliminating of one half of sludge storage/pumpage operations;
• reducing the number of activated sludge treatment trains in operation during summer months.
• Public Works and Transportation has upgraded 258 traffic lights that will substantially decrease energy use. This entailed replacing the bulbs inside the traffic lights with Light Emitting Diodes (LED) modules which use 80% less energy. LED bulbs are energy efficient replacement bulbs 700 signal heads to save energy costs. An additional initiative has been undertaken by PW &T this year to address sustainable architecture from the original building design. The program will improve energy efficiency and materials maintenance from a life cycle cost analysis.
• The Jack Evans Police Headquarters and the Ecology Parks Building opened with LEEDs certification. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.
• The Dallas Zoo has solar powered irrigation control clocks installed to reduce costs of electricity as well as battery purchases.
• At the 3112 Canton Street facility, Street Services has moved the electrical panel which controls building lights so as to enable the building lights to be turned off at the end of the workday.
• Convention and Event Services staff has completed a program to replace all electrical lighting equipment with energy efficient bulbs and fixtures.