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[ Background music ]
>> Hey family this is Marcellus Shepard the Baseman.
Welcoming you back for another exciting episode of The Baltimore Buzz.
Now today on the show I'll be talking with some of my good friends
over at the Baltimore City Department of General Services.
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So in this day and age everybody's trying to save a dollar.
No matter how you look at it, there's nothing like having some extra cash in your wallet.
Well the Baltimore City Department of General Services is on target to surpass the goal
of reducing the city's energy use by 15%.
Now our city reduced overall energy use by 6.5% already,
thus resulting in an expected 20% reduction by 2015.
Now my good friends at Atwood, the Director
of General Services has a little more to show us right now.
Hey family Marcellus Shepard the baseman here today
at the George L Winfield Fleet Maintenance Facility.
We're gonna go in and take a tour.
I have my good buddy, the Director of General Services Ted Atwood [assumed spelling] here.
>> Marcellus come on in.
Let's show you our new shop.
>> So here we are in this amazing garage, so many different vehicles here.
Tell us exactly what happens in this building.
>> Well we're pretty much behind the scenes taking care of the buildings of the city,
taking care of the fleet of the city and we created recently a energy office to look at ways
to purchase, generate and save money with energy.
The city uses its total energy expenses are over 60 million dollars, including the school system
over 100 million dollars and another role that we have is right of ways,
we give all the permits for right of ways for use of the streets, for restaurants putting
out chairs on the sidewalks, things of this sort.
>> So Ted tell us exactly how is the Department
of General Services sharing new energy initiatives with the citizens of Baltimore?
>> One of the things that's enabled us
to do this is the federal government gave us what's called an Energy Block Grant
under President Obama's program for you know improving the economy, the economic recovery
and we have a grant program that we will be giving out about one and a half million dollars
to non-profit organizations to help them do assessments of their facilities,
of how to save energy in their facilities, then also we will be providing some funding for them
to implement those saving measures in their facilities.
Then we have another grant from the Environmental Protection Agency
where we're working with John's Hopkins University, where we've trained students to go
out to non-profit organizations and assess their facilities
and identify ways for them to save energy.
So one of the things, this is kind of a new role for general services,
usually as I said our role has been behind the scenes of making and helping the government
to function better and more efficiently.
This is a role now where we're looking at energy programs for the entire city.
We have an activity that we're doing, an energy plan for the city,
looking at ways to have more renewable energy in the city.
This has always been advertised that this region is short of power so this would be a way
to help address the power shortage by reducing our demand
and by coming up with generating resources.
>> So Ted here we are 2011.
I remember growing up seeing books with flying cars or what have you.
Solar energy has been here for quite a while now, electric energy starting to catch on some.
How long do you think it will be before folks really embrace the new energy initiatives
that are available to them?
>> Well they're starting to on a very small percentage.
The difficulty has been that of course the vehicles,
the cars and solar are a bit more expensive at this time and they're different subsidies
out there from the federal government and the state government for tax credits
and that's helping to get them introduced into the economy quickly.
One of the disadvantages right now with electric vehicles is while the car is clean,
the source of the power is not because about 50% of the power that we use in this region comes
from fossil resources from coal but one of the other features that's helping
to improve the environment is that under President Obama the Cafe Legislation,
the rules that are set for the energy efficient vehicles were significantly increased a year ago
so that even if you're not using electric vehicles in the coming years we're going
to be using cars that on average are getting 30 miles per gallon rather than 20 miles per gallon
and that's the thing is each of these things take step up so the Toyota Prius used
to get 50 miles per gallon and they have a new one coming out that'll get 60 miles per gallon
because you can plug it in with a regular outdoor electric extension cord and charge it
and that'll get you the first 13 to 15 miles electric.
So if you have a short commute you never use gasoline but at the same time, the new,
smaller cars that used to get 35 miles per gallon are moving up to 40
and 45 miles per gallon so they're both of them are moving up in parallel.
Well even if they're not using or people are not embracing cuts the cost of the electric vehicles
at this time, our fossil fuel cars are getting more efficient.
>> So Ted you told us the general services is normally behind the scene
but in which way are you guys saving the city of Baltimore money?
>> Well one of things that I'm kind of proud of that we're achieving is that we are saving
or generating revenues of $3 for every dollar of our payroll and a big source that's been
for this has been instituting the energy program where we're saving between the existing projects
and the projects we're going to do in the next year,
we will be saving 10 million dollars a year for the city energy expenses and we've been able
to use these savings to leverage, to pay for capital programs for the city and that's buying
about another 20 million dollars of capital programs, non-energy saving projects.
We are participating in a pool to buy power for the city with other city governments
and county governments around the state and this saves about 20% on the cost
of the electricity and natural gas that we buy.
We have been doing a buying our gasoline as futures
so right now you know what the prices are at the pump but the cost to us is $2.51 a gallon
for gasoline and $2.56 a gallon for diesel fuel and then the third area that we've been working
in that is that the city pays a little over 5 million dollars for rental space
and we've been renegotiating these rents
and we've also been bringing those organizations back into city buildings
and so far we have reduced that by 2 million dollars in the past year.
The solar is what's becoming more attractive there is the cost is coming
down at a fairly rapid rate.
It used to cost over $5000 a kilowatt, now it's coming down into the low $4000 and we see a lot
of potential for solar in our city facilities.
We're now in the midst of developing a project to go
in the convention center, it'll be 900 kilowatts.
We're looking at the roofs of schools, we're looking at backwater wastewater treatment plant
to put in maybe about a megawatt there and the other is a lot of our former industrial sites,
which are called brown field sites so one of them that we're looking at too was a land fill
and has hazardous material and part of the way of doing the remediation of that site would be
to use solar panels so that we can get the advantage of reducing the cost of remediation
and having a source of revenue over the future years from the remediation
and that site could be 10 to 20 megawatts of solar.
>> So Ted I want to congratulate you as you were recently selected on the faculty
of the China Climate Leadership Academy.
What exactly do you plan on doing there and learning there and how can you then bring
that back to the citizens here in Baltimore?
>> Well it's interesting you ask that.
We have a technology that is a Chinese technology that we're looking
at testing at the Abel Wolman building.
If you remember all the neat architecture and new buildings in Beijing built for the Olympics,
one of them was the new train station and the way that that is heated and cooled is
through geothermal but instead of drilling wells they're using the sewage in the sewage line
because that's already underground and that's already at the temperature of underground
so we're looking at the same technology of using that in the Abel Wolman building as a test case,
we've been reviewing the economics now.
So that's an example of technology that's Chinese, that's maybe lower tech
but could be very applicable here.
>> Well Ted I appreciate your time in coming past the Baltimore Buzz today.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> The Department of General Services has applied energy alternatives
in architecture as well.
Right now, let's see an example in development.
So exactly what does an environmental policy analyst do?
>> Well we look for ways to help people save money.
We work with communities, non-profits to we have federal stimulus money
to help them do energy audits and to upgrade some
of their facilities to be more energy efficient.
One of the things I'm working on is looking at our wood waste and see how to reuse that.
So it's a whole range of things in the city.
>> So green roofs are becoming a big thing these days.
Just about every new building that is coming up is having the opportunity to have these.
Tell us about green roofing and what are the benefits of having one?
>> Well a green roof is having plants on top of the roof and in Baltimore we have a lot
of opportunity to do that because there are a lot of flat roofs here,
a lot of other cities they don't have that but in kind
of the industrial cities we have flat roofs so in this case we're the benefits
of putting a green roof on are you reduce your building costs.
Basically you can save money over time.
So the hot scorching Baltimore sun normally is beating down on your roof
but when you put plants up there the plants absorb the sun and keep the building cooler
and then the plant is using the sun to do its photosynthesizing and creating oxygen
so you have cleaner air up there as well.
So that's one major benefit and also if you have a green roof your roof will stay you won't have
to repair it as often because it's not absorbing those ultraviolet rays and also in a lot
of roofs when it's raining there's cooling of water
but here the plants will be absorbing the water so there won't be kind of pooling
and ultimately leaking later on so there's a number
of reasons why you can save money over time with a green roof.
>> So the plants are there, we know that it rains sometimes but what kind
of maintenance is gonna have to happen with these plants?
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>> There's different kinds of green roofs and ours are going to be low growing plants,
most of them we have 31 varieties of plants, most of them are sedums
and they only grow a few inches tall and for the first two years they'll need
to be watered regularly but it'll be hot and dry in Baltimore as we know
but once they establish themselves and they're weeded a little bit for the first couple
of years, they'll take off and we won't really need too much maintenance
so it's just initially you need it.
>> Well Ann thank you so much for spending some time with us
and coming on the Baltimore Buzz today.
>> Thank you.
>> Hey family Marcellus Shepard the Baseman here, standing outside of the Harry
and Janet Weinberg Resource Center joined today
by the Construction Resource Supervisor Timothy Monath [assumed spelling].
Welcome of the Baltimore Buzz.
>> Thank you Marcella.
>> Now Time we do know that this building is special for several reasons
but one of which being that it is the first lead certified silver building by general services.
Let us know about some of the other certification levels
and why in fact this one is certified as silver.
>> Well they're also gold certified and platinum supervised.
This is a lead silver and incorporate energy efficiency and the heating
and air conditioning units, recycled materials during the construction process,
recycle materials in the construction of the building and all of these factors go
into equaling what you're certification is.
>> So what kind of recycled materials are you guys using in this building?
>> We're using recycled dry wall material, recycled vinyl composition tiles,
recycled ceramic tiling and there's also
that would be the recycled materials that are going back in.
50% of our construction debris was diverted from landfills into recycled materials
and bricks were recycled, dry wall materials were recycled, things of that nature.
We're anticipating completion this spring.
>> So Tim the talk around the country is green sustainable energy and energy efficiency.
In which ways is this building energy efficient?
>> Well Marcellus everything in here all the water fixtures will be low flush,
low water use fixtures, the heating
and air conditioning systems are all high efficiency units that are going in
and overall operational costs should be considerably lower
than other city buildings in the future.
Now this was an existing department
of transportation building that the city is reusing.
We gutted it, raised the roof, added a third floor onto it to increase the capacity
of the building and just salvaged the building and recycled it into future use for the city.
>> Timothy Monath the Construction Project Supervisor we want to thank you for your time
and coming onto the Baltimore Buzz today.
>> Thank you.
Glad I could help.
>> Family, The Baltimore Buzz will be back right after this.