Tarrant Regional Water District – Kathryn Collins – 2016

Goals

Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD), having already employed nearly a dozen programs based for cutting energy costs, has made great progress in reducing its carbon footprint. To consolidate these programs and other sustainability accomplishments into a comprehensive Energy Management Plan, EDF Climate Corps fellow Kathryn Collins was brought onboard. TRWD supplies millions of customers with millions of gallons of water each day. With the service area expected to grow by 2 million more end-of-pipe customers by 2050, energy management policies are critical to reducing operation costs. 

Solutions

Kathryn introduced each of TRWD’s energy management programs and consolidated these into an Energy Management Plan that could be championed both inside the organization and shared publicly. Programs included prioritizing pump efficiency in operation and refurbishment plans, using climate and hydrology as the first inputs in modeling customer demand, procuring energy to hedge against rising energy costs, and engaging communities on new watering policies to reduce water use in TRWD’s service area.  

To better support sustainability ground breakers, Kathryn proposed forming an official Energy Team in charge of benchmarking their department programs and helping to create new organization-wide goals. TRWD staff will also have access to a new ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager account designed to consolidate energy and water bill tracking across multiple departments. All future information will be recorded in one location with meters assigned to each of TRWD’s 130+ facilities.

Potential Impact

Knowing energy management can reduce costs for water treatment operators and community members, as well as create more sustainable water-energy relationships, TRWD plans to receive Board of Director support for an organizational-wide energy policy. This will be one of the main initiatives led by the new TRWD Energy Team, whose mix of organization-wide experience can be used to set achievable goals. The new Energy Management Plan will be a powerful tool to illustrate that energy savings are more than just cost savings, they are a core competency and central piece of TRWD’s identity.