Kansas City, Kansas

Atrium of Kansas City Headquarters Building.

This facility features the following green attributes:
Green Power
ENERGY STAR
Mechanical Upgrades

Region 7 Office

Total Facility Area: 203,475 rentable square feet (RSF) (EPA share)
Estimated Personnel: 667 EPA personnel
Energy Consumption: 15,335,575,200 British thermal units (Btu) per year (EPA share)
Btu per RSF per Year: 75,368
Water Consumption: 3,377,968 gallons per year
Gallons per RSF per Year: 16.60

All energy and water data are reported as of FY 2008.

Description

In June 1999, Region 7 Headquarters moved into a new building in Kansas City, Kansas. Built on a brownfield site, the Kansas City Regional Office was designed to reflect a transition from residential neighborhoods to commercial district. In addition, the building features many award-winning design attributes including a four-story, light-filled atrium that provides natural lighting for most of the office space.

Unique Environmental Features

Energy Conservation

The building in which the Region 7 office is located was awarded the ENERGY STAR® label in 2008.
Installation of a small chiller, completed in December 2001, can serve 24 hour-a-day loads such as the computer room and allow the two large main chillers to shut down at night, on weekends, and during the winter (when overall building cooling needs are low). Large chillers operating at low loads operate inefficiently. The addition of the pony chiller has reduced energy use by at least 10 percent.
One way energy is conserved throughout the building is through lighting features. All occupied spaces contain motion sensors which control general lighting, while timers control the exterior lighting.

Green Power

EPA offsets 100 percent of the electricity consumption at the Region 7 office with renewable energy certificates (RECs) purchased through the Agency's current blanket green power contract. Learn more about EPA's current and past blanket green power contracts.
In October 2004, EPA began a three year contract to purchase green power in the form of renewable energy certificates for its Region 7 Office. The purchase, which represented 100 percent of the facility's electricity use, helped support the annual generation of 4.45 million kilowatt hours (kWh) from the Gray County Wind Farm near Montezuma, Kansas. The wind farm consists of 170 turbines capable of generating 110-megawatts of electricity.

Green Building

For building materials, recycled content products were used wherever possible. For example, foundation materials containing fly ash (a byproduct of coal combustion) were used throughout construction. In addition, nearly all the interior finish contains recycled or environmentally friendly content. The ceramic tiles, for example, were made from over 70 percent postindustrial recycled waste glass, while much of the carpet consists of 25 percent recycled material.

Water Conservation

Water use at the Kansas City Regional Office has been cut by 62 percent (or 830,000 gallons per year) as a result of the installation of a water softener. The softener reduces the hardness of the water before it reaches the cooling tower, preventing the scale deposits from building up, and therefore reducing the need for flushing and draining. During a typical hot summer day, this will reduce cooling tower water use by 5,700 gallons of water per day. Installation was completed and the project was operational in FY 2003.
As part of EPA's Green Rider for the Kansas City regional office, water is conserved through low flow faucets, urinals, and toilets. To learn more, please see the Kansas City Regional Office Green Rider.

Other Features

EPA also obtained an Economic Development Rate Rider, which offers a 5-year, stepped discount on the cost of electric service which will result in an estimated energy and maintenance cost savings of $1.2 million during the 10-year EPA lease.

For More Information

Off the Shelf (PDF) (27 pp, 4.7MB, About PDF). This publication provides more information on the Kansas City, Kansas, Headquarters building. Disclaimer: This publication was prepared by various members of the Kansas City EPA Regional Headquarters building team, including EPA staff, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) staff, and the building developer's staff. This is not an official EPA publication. Small changes have been made to the original publication (and have been marked) to reflect more current information. This document also includes references to specific products and companies that assisted EPA and GSA with the project. These references are included to provide additional detail and do not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.

Contact

Bucky Green (green.bucky@epa.gov)
Sustainable Facilities Practices Branch
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. (3204R)
Washington, DC 20460
Phone: (202) 564-6371
Fax: (202) 564-8234

Web site: www.epa.gov/region7