AGENCY PROGRESS REPORT
The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) is committed to improving conservation of energy, water, fuel, and natural gas, and has implemented the following employee initiatives listed below.
- Complete elimination of personal appliances including the following:
- space heaters (1592 watts per unit).
- small refrigerators (384 watts per unit).
- microwaves (1200 watts per unit).
- coffee pots (93 watts per unit).
- small fans (49.5 watts per unit).
- All offices and suites with cubicle banks have motion sensing lights that automatically turn off when no motion is detected.
- TDI leases copiers with the latest Energy Star® rated equipment that have a power save feature to power down the equipment during periods of inactivity.
- Texas Facility Commission (TFC) has provided and installed an all-new high SEER rated HVAC system in the new Barbara Jordan State Office Building. It is our understanding that it is equipped with variable speed condensers for cooling and boilers for heating.
Gasoline Consumption Initiatives
In accordance with the Texas State Vehicle Fleet Management Plan published by the Comptroller of Public Accounts in Feb. 2001, TDI has modified its fleet and overall fuel consumption significantly.
- The current national new vehicle supply shortage has impeded the agency’s ability to replace eligible vehicles. However, TDI has several vehicles on order that are more fuel efficient than the existing and will replace them upon receipt.
- Purchased and installed GPS trackers on all agency vehicles so that drivers are aware of maintaining posted speeds and reduce/eliminate hard accelerations.
- Local driving routes have been modified to significantly reduce time and miles driven given the close proximity to destinations to the new Barbara Jordan State office building.
IT Energy Conservation Initiatives
- TDI has implemented and continues to use a monitoring system that tracks the heating and cooling systems within our computer rooms. This monitoring system improves TDI’s ability to keep these spaces within the optimal operating temperature ranges of the equipment while keeping the temperature at the higher end of the manufacturers’ recommended thresholds.
- Within the past year we started moving our web browsing security system to the cloud and that will allow us to reduce a couple of network appliances. This project is expected to be completed in Jan. 2023.
- TDI is in the process of moving more systems to the Microsoft Cloud. This project will also eliminate hardware that uses energy.
- TDI eliminated a wireless network appliance as a result of the move to the Barbara Jordan State Office Building. This appliance will also be retired once all field offices are upgraded to the newer cloud based (Meraki) wireless system. TDI is in the process of purchasing the remaining services to complete this upgrade project.
- TDI continues to provide all agency employees with laptops which allowed most of TDI employees to work remotely each day as part of TDI’s pandemic response. This reduced energy consumption in all TDI offices. As TDI moves away from its pandemic response, teleworking will continue at a higher rate than pre-pandemic.
- TDI eliminated 2 utility servers for Domain Controller services and Microsoft SCCM. This equipment provided a 50 percent reduction in energy usage from this server environment.
Conclusion
TDI does not receive electrical or water use statements from TFC nor do we know what portion of the Barbara Jordan State Office Building’s overall consumption is attributed to the agency. TDI’s efforts to reduce energy and water consumption will continue, however as it stands any tangible comparable results are indeterminable.
EMPLOYEE AWARENESS PLAN
The TFC has placed several energy and water reduction reminder signage throughout the building.
In addition to what is stated in the Progress Report, TDI occasionally reminds staff to be energy and water reduction conscious within the internal agency news feed. TDI has no plans to discontinue this practice.
