Andre McEwing, TCCD, Formerly of Southeast Fort Worth, Inc.

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Andre McEwing spoke to the class about why sustainability makes good business sense, especially in the inner city. For several years, Mr. McEwing managed Southeast Fort Worth, Inc., a nonprofit that strives to attract business to southeast Fort Worth with by helping them procure government assistance through deductions, credits, and sometimes abatements. For him, the greatest challenge was to balance the "sweat equity" of the local community and showing the ROI to potential investors. To be successful, he felt that he had to constantly discuss fundraising wherever he went, and he needed to rely on a diverse board that represented varying local, governmental, and private sector interests.

The City of Fort Worth has designated a number of "urban villages," or target mixed use development areas, where they want to improve infrastructure and attract private investment as well as new residents.

Finding investors was always a challenge because they naturally wanted to be part of a larger city plan. When such plans are proposed, many vocal citizens may oppose the plan and slow down implementation of the plan. Citizens may also not be happy with the companies that ultimately decide to invest in their community; however, Mr. McEwing stated that one cannot simply dismiss a private interest because a few citizens do not like what they represent because private investment translates into jobs.

One of the most use tools at his disposal were tax increment financing, usually referred to as TIFs. By leveraging the future real estate value increases of a development project, city government and nonprofits are better able to attract private investment.

A specific challenge in multiethnic southeast Fort Worth is that there have been demographic shifts in several neighborhoods, which needs to be taken into account when attempting to attract private investment. For example, Mr. Ewing was able to help a local apparel store move to a new location because of a southeast Fort Worth TIF that make it possible to convert an abandoned gas station into a new apparel store. Before the move, the apparel store owner had been suffering from lackluster sales because his core demographic had long ago moved to other parts of the city.

Laura Blaylock, Tarrant Regional Water District

Laura Blaylock, a hydrologist and sustainability champion, gave my REAE 5304 class a tour of Tarrant Regional Water District LEED Gold Annex Building. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an internationally-recognized verification of environmentally friendly and sustainable buildings. 

Ms. Blaylock started by giving us an overview of the history of the TRWD and an explanation of its mission of providing water to over 2 million residents in an eight-county area stretching from Wise County in the northwest to Freestone County in the southeast. 

When the TWRD began to outgrow some of its facilities, it also realized that it needed to better centralize its organization and find a more central location for its SCADA IT command center. Hence, the idea for an annex building was born. Since the Water District's mission deals with maintaining a sustainable water supply, it only seemed fitting to try to construct a more sustainable building. 

Initially, the TWRD aimed for LEED Silver status. However, after Ms. Blaylock and others were able to convince management that the building plans made the building optimal for a solar array, the TWRD set out to construct the first LEED Gold building in Tarrant County. While the panels were expensive, they should pay for themselves in 16 to 18 years

Many of the building materials that were chosen also helped this building achieve LEED Gold status. For example, the conference rooms boast cork flooring, which is a renewable material. Building cabinets are made of a material that improves air quality, a key factor in LEED certification. Walls were painted with non-volitile organic compound (VOC) paints to further improve indoor air quality. The floors are polished with beeswax, another renewable substance. Most of the furniture comes from either recycled or recyclable materials, and even the steel used in the building is 40% recycled steel. 

The building even received LEED credit for its bike racks, its proximity to bicycle trails, its wellness center, and its eco-friendly meeting spaces that feature an employee-led recycling program.

The building's interior lights are responsive to daylight, and its exterior lights are downward facing LED lights that reduce light pollution.

Being a water authority, one would expect the building to demonstrate water conservation, and it does. It has three 2,500 gallon rainwater tanks and a drip irrigation system for its landscaping. 

Ms. Blaylock, like most other sustainability officers, was trained in a different field but became the organization's sustainability champion because she made a suggestion and was able to articulate the message of sustainability in business terms so that leadership could see the economic and social as well as environmental benefits of sustainability, the so-called "sustainability bottom line."

Dan Lepinski's Solar Shuttle

Dan Lepinksi, a pioneer in the field of solar energy, demonstrated his Solar Shuttle, DEFINITION, and gave a powerpoint presentation about solar energy. After briefly introducing himself and the giving an overview of the Solar Shuttle, the class went to the back parking lot at the UT Arlington Fort Worth Center to take a look at his heavily-modified trailer with solar cells.

Mr. Lepinski first became interested in solar energy when he worked on a prize-winning sixth grade science fair project. Although he won the science fair, one of his teachers commented that solar energy was too expensive and not practical, which motivated Mr. Lepinski to spend his life experimenting with solar energy and finding ways to make it more mainstream.

One of the projects he worked on was a contraption that converted solar energy to AC power which could be used during an emergency or disaster when the power grid fails. 

The Fort Worth Police Department had become aware of Mr. Lepinki's device at a MayFest celebration and in 2005 requested to use it during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. They accomplished this by housing the regulators, batteries, and inverters inside of a horse trailer and putting the solar panels on the roof and side wall of said horse trailer. After his equipment was returned to him, Mr. Lepinski started to donate his "Solar Shuttle" for other emergencies and began demonstrating it to the public as one of the more practical uses of solar energy.

The Solar Shuttle is a heavily modified horse trailer with reinforced walls and a set of photovoltaic panels attached to the roof and driver's side wall. The inside of the Solar Shuttle consists of photovoltaic(solar) panels, boxes that regular power into batteries, specially made batteries, and inverters (DC to AC power convertors).

Sunlight is converted to electricity when it hits the solar panels. This electricity is then regulated before current is passed to the batteries. The batteries then store the electricity until it is used. When someone plugs something into one of the AC outlets, power from the batteries is converted from direct current to alternating current.

After demonstrating the Solar Shuttle and answering student questions, the class returned to the classroom, where Mr. Lepinski gave a powerpoint presentation about solar energy. He explained the different types of photovoltaic cells, such as rooftop panels for electricity, panels for hot water heating, transparent cells for skylights and flexible cells used for powering smaller devices like cell phone chargers. If a solar panel, such as a rooftop panel for electricity, is applied over existing building elements, it is considered BAPV, business applied photovoltaic glass. If the photovoltaic glass replaces another building element, like when a transparent solar panel replaces a skylight, it is called BIPV, or business integrated photovoltaic glass.

Mr Lepinski also dispelled several myths about solar power concerning their aesthetics and cost. Rather than being an eyesore, newer panels can be made less conspicuous by coloring the glass or by shaping them to match roof tiles or shingles. With federal, state, and local tax incentives solar panels can actually be more cost effective than using only grid electricity, especially over the long term.


I have to admit that before Mr. Lepinski's presentation, I had the same stereotype about solar energy as his sixth grade teacher: that it is too expensive to be economically viable. However, Lepinski gave a lot of evidence to the contrary. I was not aware, for example, that solar panel prices have decreased dramatically in the past few years and that a system can be set up on a home for as little as $8,000, before tax credits and other incentives. It was also surprising to find that the government subsidizes thirty percent of the cost of solar panels in the form of tax credits and that state and local governments give further incentives for companies and individuals. Moreover, Lepinski's view that solar energy should be seen as a supplement in a portfolio of energy solutions made a lot more sense to me than trying to convert everything to solar.