Texas Land Conservation Assistance Network

Best Energy Management Practices: Best Management Practices, or BMPs, can help improve energy efficiency. Developed by experienced practitioners or management and research organizations, they are based upon the best available science.

The following are a selection of BMPs culled from various national, regional, state and local sources. Each is available for download as a pdf.

What is Green Building?

Green buildings are sited, designed, constructed, and operated to enhance the well-being of their occupants and support a healthy community and natural environment. In practical terms, green building is a whole-systems-approach to building that includes:

• Designing for livable communities
• Using sun and site to the building's advantage for natural heating, cooling, and daylighting
• Landscaping with native, drought-resistant plants and water-efficient practices
• Building quality, durable structures
• Reducing and recycling construction and demolition waste
• Insulating well and ventilating appropriately
• Incorporating durable, salvaged, recycled, and sustainably harvested materials
• Using healthy products and building practices
• Using energy-efficient and water-saving appliances, fixtures and technologies

More than just a fad, building green has rapidly become an industry trend.

McGraw Hill's new 2013 Dodge Construction Green Outlook report shows green building in the United States accelerated to 44 percent of all 2012 commercial and institutional construction and expected to be 55 percent by 2016. Green home and renovation was about half that at 20 percent in 2012 and expected to reach 38 percent by 2016.

Some of the other statistics in the report briefly are:

• The green building value is rising from $10 billion in 2005 to $78 billion in 2011; expected at $85 billion in 2012, between $98 billion and $106 billion by 2013, and projected to reach $204 billion to $248 billion by 2016
• By 2016, one third of all United States home builders expect to be "fully dedicated" to building green
• 35 percent of construction jobs are green today
• 81 percent of corporate executive leaders think the public expects them to be into sustainability and that is one of the main reasons corporations are making green efforts
• 30 percent of senior executive officers say they are greening two-thirds of their buildings
• 47 percent of senior executive officers expect to green their buildings by 2015

Green Building practices aim to maximize the efficiency with which buildings use resources such as energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's State Profile and Energy Estimates:

"In 1999, the Public Utility Commission of Texas first adopted rules for the state's renewable energy mandate. In 2005, the state legislature amended the mandate to require that 5,880 megawatts, or about 5% of the state's electricity capacity, come from renewable sources by 2015. Lawmakers also set a goal of 10,000 megawatts of renewable capacity by 2025, including 500 megawatts from resources other than wind.⁸⁹ Texas surpassed the 2015 goal in 2005 and the 2025 goal in 2009, almost entirely with wind power.⁹⁰ Renewable energy sources contributed just under one-tenth of the state's net electricity generation in 2014, but that amounted to about 15% of the U.S. total electricity generated from all nonhydroelectric renewable resources. Texas was second only to California in nonhydroelectric renewable generation.⁹¹

Wind accounts for nearly all of the electricity generated from renewable resources in Texas.⁹² The state encouraged construction of wind farms on its wide plains by authorizing Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ), a $7-billion effort in which transmission lines were built to connect to future wind farms.⁹³ Texas leads the nation in wind-powered electricity generation, producing more than one-fifth of the U.S. total in 2014, and, in 2011, was the first state to reach 10,000 megawatts of installed wind generating capacity.^94,95,96 At the end of 2014, wind represented 14% of the ERCOT grid's generating capacity⁹⁷ and produced about 9% of state net generation overall.⁹⁸ Substantial additional wind generation capacity is under construction.⁹⁹

Texas is rich in other renewable energy resources, including solar and biomass. High levels of direct solar radiation in West Texas give the state some of the largest solar power potential in the nation.¹⁰⁰ The agricultural and forestry sectors provide Texas with abundant biomass and biofuel resources. Texas is expanding its use of biomass in the production of electricity.¹⁰¹ Currently, less than 1% of the state's electricity is generated using biomass.¹⁰² Texas has four ethanol plants in the agriculturally rich high plains region in the state's northwest.¹⁰³

Hydroelectric power contributes less than 1% to the electricity generated in Texas because the relatively gentle terrain and low rainfall throughout much of the state are not conducive to its development. Reservoirs are primarily used for water storage, with electricity generation as a secondary purpose, and water is usually not released from reservoirs solely to generate power.¹⁰⁴

Texas has a unique untapped geothermal resource: its large network of crude oil and natural gas wells. Existing wells connect to deeper geothermal resources, many with water as hot as 200°C. More than 12 billion barrels of non-potable water are produced annually as a byproduct from the state's crude oil and natural gas wells, and heat from that water could be used to generate electricity."¹⁰⁵

Incentives for Renewable Energy

While there are few incentives for renewable energy in the Texas Tax Code, combined there are more than 100 incentives available to Texans at the federal and local levels, and from utilities. A list of these renewable energy incentives can be found on the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE).