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With Plant, TI Goes for the Green

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By Terry Maxon, The Dallas Morning News

Nov. 20--Paul Westbrook did an excellent job in building his energy-efficient home of 2,700 square feet.

His reward: He helped persuade his employer Texas Instruments Inc. to use a similar approach in designing a plant with 1.1 million square feet.

By the end of March, TI will be ready to move into its plant at the corner of Alma and Renner roads in Richardson, with the satisfaction of knowing that it did just about everything it could to make the plant use less water and energy and to be nicer to the planet.

TI broke ground on the Richardson fabrication plant a year ago Friday. The RFAB, as it's come to be know, will manufacture wafers used in making semiconductors.

Long before construction began, TI officials had spent considerable time looking at ways to cut the project's lifetime expenses, not the initial expense of building the facility.

"As in about any construction project, 'first cost' is usually king," Mr. Westbrook said recently, sitting in one of the many construction trailers at the site.

"But with these fab plants, over the life of the facility, utility costs can actually add up to exceed the first costs. We set out to go do something about that," said Mr. Westbrook, TI's sustainable development manager for semiconductor manufacturing.

The plant's smarter design is expected to reduce utility costs by 20 percent and cut water usage by 35 percent. Construction costs per square foot ran about a third less than for a comparable TI facility built in the 1990s.

The 92-acre complex includes a number of common features to reduce the environmental impact. It has a pond for irrigation. Solar panels help heat water. Energy-saving lighting abounds.

But the design uses countless little touches that, in the aggregate, will also save a lot of energy and water and will often make the buildings more pleasant for employees.

Ledges outside the administration building shade the windows, and light ledges inside the building will protect workers closest to the windows and bounce sunlight far into the interior for others.

Little turbines in bathroom drains will power the electric eyes that turn sink faucets on and off. Special urinals stay odor-free without flushing, saving a gallon of water on every usage. A windmill will aerate the pond by pumping in air bubbles.

It adds up to considerable savings -- important for any facility, and crucial in a $3 billion site that TI expects to use for many years. It also makes it likely that the TI facility will win a coveted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The council has developed a points system to measure the many ways that a building project can incorporate smart ideas into its design, from erosion control during construction, to use of recycled materials, to features to reduce energy costs and water usage after it goes into use.

TI is shooting for a "silver" designation for the manufacturing plant and a "gold" designation for the three-story administration building.

Only a handful of Texas buildings have earned LEED certification. SMU is hoping to get a gold LEED certification for its new engineering building, which is under construction.

For Mr. Westbrook and others working on the design, the most important part was to get higher-ups to buy into the concept of a top-to-bottom design that looked at every feasible way to be environmentally friendly.

A big catalyst was a 2003 visit by three TI vice presidents to Mr. Westbrook's home in Fairview.

The house, built in 1996, has a heat-pump system that has its pipes buried in the ground; solar panels to heat water; recycled plastic in its carpets and decking; and rainwater tanks for irrigation.

But what impressed them most were his utility bills -- $69 a month on average, with the highest ever only about $100.

"When he took a look at my utility bill, Kevin Ritchie, our manufacturing manager, said 'How does this scale up to a big building?' He was interested," Mr. Westbrook said.

TI planners had already produced white papers backing an environmentally smart building, but the concept was boosted by support from Mr. Ritchie, TI's senior vice president of technology and manufacturing, and other executives.

"Kevin said, 'What do you need to make this happen?' That was a big welcome mat."

TI officials visited the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo., for a three-day discussion on the plant's design and came up with a long list of possibilities, including a dozen top concepts, dubbed the "Big Honkin' Ideas."

One of the institute's engineers planted the idea of going for the LEED designation. Once TI embraced the idea, it had a scorecard to tell how it was doing.

In fact, Mr. Westbrook said, TI executives became caught up in getting the highest score possible.

The biggest savings came in water and energy usage, a big issue for such a large plant and for the fab tools, which typically use 2to 3 million gallons of water a day.

A certain portion of the water brought into the plant is rejected because it has too many impurities to manufacture wafers, but it's fine as a coolant.

Pablo Ruiz, a TI facilities mechanical engineer who worked on the water system's design, said the new plant will use that water in cooling towers.

"Even in the hottest part of the year, we think we'll be able to supply the majority of the water to cooling tower from the [rejected water], and not require any water from the city," he said.

Water-saving ideas like that didn't really count to improve TI's LEED score, Mr. Westbrook said, "but holy cow, they reduced our water usage by about a third."

TI was able to reduce the amount of air inside the plant that was sent outside, and thereby reduced the amount of hot or cold air outside that had to be cleaned and conditioned to the 70 to 72 degrees and 45 percent humidity required inside the plant.

Roofs use a white reflective coating to reduce heat. Mr. Westbrook said he measured the roof at a nearby TI facility at 140 degrees on a hot July day; the comparable reading on the new plant was 118 degrees.

To improve the environment, exterior lights will point down, and parking lots will have a cooler reflective surface rather than the usual gray concrete or black asphalt, which heat up the area. TI will plant wildflowers or drought-resistant plants in much of the green areas.

Like TI, SMU began the design of its J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building with an eye toward LEED certification. Engineering school dean Geoffrey Orsak said the impetus wasn't the environmental movement.

"It's actually a pretty simple story," Mr. Orsak said. "We're engineers, and engineers have a philosophy on good design. It was just so philosophically aligned with everything we believe in -- good, smart design and construction practices."

The green-building features will add perhaps 2 or 3 percent to the $16 million price tag, but SMU may see energy savings of 20 percent to 30 percent, with its more human-friendly design expected to increase performance and reduce sickness, Mr. Orsak said.

"The savings are going to be enormous for this complex over its lifetime," he said. Unlike private firms that build and then sell a project, "we'll have this building for a century or more, so any savings that we can build it into it now will pay back dividends for decades to come."

Although only a few buildings have achieved LEED status, Mr. Orsak said he expects many more to be designed and built as green buildings.

"I just don't think you're going to see buildings a decade from now built that aren't designed to these specifications," he said. "I'm an engineer, and it's just reassuring to see smart design put into practice."

TI's Mr. Westbrook said he hopes the new TI building meets the definition of a sustainable project.

"My favorite definition is a balance of the people, profit and planet," he said. "It's not over-consuming resources at the expense of future generations. You want to build a facility that doesn't take too much from the Earth."

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TXN,

Source: The Dallas Morning News

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