This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

March 06, 2013

St. Louis Launches Plan for More Sustainable Community

St. Louis, regarded as the Gateway to the West, is also becoming the gateway to sustainability for the state of Missouri. Central to increasing energy efficiency in St. Louis has been the Energy Department's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program.

St. Louis identified its City Hall, considered the crown jewel of the city's buildings portfolio, as a building that could benefit from retrofit. Before making upgrades, the city conducted an energy audit of the building and determined that it was only occupied 40% of the year. The city saw an opportunity to reduce energy use for the other 60% of the year when the systems require minimal operation. EECBG funds were leveraged to help meet these energy efficiency goals, including HVAC retrofits, internal lighting upgrades, direct digital control upgrades and whole building lighting upgrades, and resulted in energy savings up to 50%.

Additionally, 52 outdated metal halide lamp fixtures were replaced with LED fixture tops in the City Hall parking structure. The new LED fixtures deliver more useful light where it is needed and use a total of 1.3 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy—compared to the 7.8 kWh required by the previous lighting—for an energy savings of nearly 83%. For the complete story, see the Energy Blog.