1.
CenterPoint Energy Plaza
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CenterPoint Energy Plaza is a 741 feet tall building in downtown Houston. The original building, finished in 1974, stood at 651 feet, designed by Richard Keating, this renovation dramatically changed the building, the Houston Skyline and the downtown. Keating was also the designer of the nearby Wells Fargo Tower and it has the headquarters of CenterPoint Energy. Historically the building housed the headquarters of Houston Industries and subsidiary Houston Lighting & Power, in 1999 Houston Industries changed its name to Reliant Energy. When Reliant Energy moved out of the building and moved into the new Reliant Energy Plaza in 2003, around 1995 the building owners added a circle-shaped canopy that is five stories tall. Clifford Pugh of the Houston Chronicle wrote that It was meant to resemble a lantern, List of tallest buildings in Houston List of tallest buildings in Texas List of tallest buildings in the United States DMJM H&N Architects website
2.
Houston
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Houston is the most populous city in the state of Texas and the fourth-most populous city in the United States. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 2.239 million within an area of 667 square miles, it also is the largest city in the southern United States and the seat of Harris County. Located in Southeast Texas near the Gulf of Mexico, it is the city of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land. Houston was founded on August 28,1836, near the banks of Buffalo Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5,1837. The city was named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had commanded, the burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the citys population. Houstons economy has an industrial base in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics. Leading in health care sectors and building equipment, Houston has more Fortune 500 headquarters within its city limits than any city except for New York City. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled, the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse city in Texas and has described as the most diverse in the United States. It is home to cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has a visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District. In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York, Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen, purchased 6,642 acres of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the general at the Battle of San Jacinto. The great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the slave states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the slave trade. New Orleans was the center of trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved African Americans lived near the city before the Civil War, many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. Houston was granted incorporation on June 5,1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor, in the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas
3.
Texas
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Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Other major cities include Austin, the second most populous state capital in the U. S. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify its former status as an independent republic, and as a reminder of the states struggle for independence from Mexico. The Lone Star can be found on the Texan state flag, the origin of Texass name is from the word Tejas, which means friends in the Caddo language. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of Texas land area is desert. Most of the centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the term six flags over Texas refers to several nations that have ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas, Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as the 28th state, the states annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, after the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. One Texan industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle, due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The states economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated a boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy, as of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace. Texas has led the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product. The name Texas, based on the Caddo word tejas meaning friends or allies, was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves, during Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas, La Provincia de Texas. Texas is the second largest U. S. state, behind Alaska, though 10 percent larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile, Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers, the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
NRG Energy
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NRG Energy, Inc. is a large American energy company, dual-headquartered in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, and Houston, Texas. It was formerly the wholesale arm of Xcel Energy, and was spun off in bankruptcy in 2004, when the state of Texas deregulated the electricity market, the former Houston Lighting & Power was split into several companies. In 2003 HL&P was split into Texas Genco, CenterPoint Energy, in 2006, NRG Energy bought Texas Genco from a group of private equity firms for roughly $5.9 billion. Afterwards, in May 2009, NRG Energy acquired the operations of Reliant Energy. With those two moves, NRGs holdings represented most of the former HL&P and today serve 1.6 million customers in Texas, the retail operations continue to operate under the Reliant Energy name while the remainder of the former Reliant Energy became RRI Energy. Following the acquisition of Reliant, NRG extended its footprint with the acquisition of Green Mountain Energy in November 2010. NRG Energy completed its acquisition of GenOn Energy in December 2012 for $1.7 billion in stock, the GenOn name was retired in the merger, but the combined company retained GenOns Houston headquarters to coordinate operations. In August 2013, NRG acquired Energy Curtailment Specialists, a Buffalo, the terms of the deal were not disclosed In September 2014, NRG acquired Goal Zero, a manufacturer of personal solar power products. NRG Energy holds the rights to the NRG Park campus in Houston, Texas, home to the NRG Astrodome, NRG Stadium, NRG Arena. On March 12,2014, NRG Energy announced that they would be re-branding Reliant Park to replace Reliant on all signages to NRG, after the GenOn merger, NRG has 47,000 MW of total generation capacity, enough to power approximately 40 million homes. Its nearly 100 power plants are located in 18 states in the Northeast, Chicago area, Gulf Coast, Southwest, Nevada, generation facilities include mostly fossil fuel power plants powered by natural gas, oil, and coal, plus four wind farms and six solar farms. NRG also has a 44% ownership stake in the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station, some facilities use cogeneration and the company also owns 28MW of solar distributed generation. NRGs Retail Power services provide electricity services to more than 2 million homes and businesses, mostly in Arizona, beginning in 2009, NRG began an initiative to become an green energy producer in the United States and started investing money in clean energy projects. They include onshore and offshore wind power, solar energy, photovoltaic, and distributed solar power facilities. In late 2010, NRG launched the EVgo network, the first completely private public car charging network for electric power vehicles. The company signed a two-year agreement beginning in January 2011 to provide 100% renewable energy for the Empire State Building, assemblywoman Aravella Simotas has been chair of a coalition to support the utility in their plan to replace its decades-old, dirty power plant in Astoria with a newer generator. The company stated its intention in 2012 to replace 31 older oil generators with new gas generators that will increase the megawatts of power while reducing emissions, greenStreet New York energy law NRG Energy Website Reliant Energy website EVgo Website
6.
Skyscraper
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A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building having multiple floors. When the term was used in the 1880s it described a building of 10 to 20 floors. Mostly designed for office, commercial and residential uses, a skyscraper can also be called a high-rise, for buildings above a height of 300 m, the term supertall can be used, while skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m are classified as megatall. One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel framework that supports curtain walls and these curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of reinforced concrete. Modern skyscrapers walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure, and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, a relatively big building may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes well above its built environment and changes the overall skyline. The maximum height of structures has progressed historically with building methods and technologies, the Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world. High-rise buildings are considered shorter than skyscrapers, the first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, Illinois in 1885. Even the scholars making the argument find it to be purely academic and this definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicagos Monadnock Building. What is the characteristic of the tall office building. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and it must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line. Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, the word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. A loose convention of some in the United States and Europe draws the limit of a skyscraper at 150 m or 490 ft. The tallest building in ancient times was the 146 m Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt and it was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the 14th century AD Lincoln Cathedral being conjectured by many to have exceeded it
7.
Downtown Houston
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Downtown Houston is Houstons central business district, containing the headquarters of many prominent companies. There is a network of pedestrian tunnels and skywalks connecting the buildings of the district. The tunnel system is home to restaurants, shops and services. What is now Downtown made up almost all of the City of Houston until expansions of the city limits in the early 20th century, Downtown Houston was the original founding point of the city. After the Texas Revolution, two New York real estate promoters, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, purchased 6,642 acres of land from Thomas F. L, parrot and his wife, Elizabeth, for $9,428. The Allen brothers first landed in the area where the White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou meet, gail Borden, Jr. a city planner, laid out wide streets for the town. The city was granted incorporation by the Texas legislature on June 5,1837, Houston was the temporary capital of Texas. In 1840, the town was divided into four wards, each with different functions in the community, by 1906 what is now Downtown was divided among six wards. The wards are no longer political divisions, but their names are used to refer to certain areas. Houston became a choice, as only the most powerful storms were able to reach the city. The second came a year later with the 1901 discovery of oil at spindletop, shipping and oil industries began flocking to east Texas, many settling in Houston. From that point forward the area grew substantially, as many skyscrapers were constructed, in the 1980s, however, economic recession canceled some projects and caused others to be scaled back, such as the Bank of the Southwest Tower. Ralph Bivins of the Houston Chronicle wrote that Fox said that area was a neighborhood of Victorian-era homes. Bivins said that the construction of Union Station, which occurred around 1910, hotels opened in the area to service travelers. Afterwards, according to Bivins, the area began a downward slide toward the skid row of the 1990s. Passenger trains stopped going to Union Station in 1974, the construction of Interstate 45 in the 1950s separated portions of the historic Third Ward from the rest of the Third Ward and brought those portions into Downtown. Beginning in the 1960s the development of the 610 Loop caused the focus of the Houston area to move away from Downtown Houston, in the mid-1980s, the bank savings and loan crisis forced many tenants in Downtown Houston buildings to retrench, and some tenants went out of business. Barna said that this development further caused Downtown Houston to decline, the Gulf Hotel fire occurred in 1943
8.
GenOn Energy
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GenOn Energy, Inc. based in Houston, Texas, United States, was an energy company that provided electricity to wholesale customers in the United States. GenOn Energy is headquartered in the Reliant Energy Plaza in Downtown Houston, the company, formerly known as RRI Energy, acquired Mirant on December 3,2010. The corporate names and logos of both RRI Energy and Mirant were retired, NRG Energy completed its acquisition of GenOn Energy in December 2012 for $1.7 billion. GenOns stock ceased trading and was exchanged for NRG stock, the company was originally known as Houston Industries, and Houston Lighting & Power was its subsidiary. In August 1996 HI closed on a merger with NorAm Energy Corp, the combined company, as of 1997, had assets of $18 billion and annual revenues of about $9 billion. By November 1997 there was a report stating that the company wished to acquire Central & South West Corp. In 1999, Houston Industries changed its name to Reliant Energy and it was scheduled to begin trading under REI on February 8,1999. In 2002, Texas deregulated the electricity market and Reliant then competed against other companies like Direct Energy. At this time, Reliant Energy also separated into two publicly traded companies, Reliant Resources, Inc. and CenterPoint Energy, Inc, when the state of Texas deregulated the electricity market, the former HL&P was split into several companies. In 2003 HL&P was split into Reliant Energy, Texas Genco, CenterPoint Energy was created when Reliant Energy merged with an indirect subsidiary of CenterPoint Energy, Inc. As a result of the merger, Reliant Energy shareholders received one share of CenterPoint common stock in exchange for each share of RRI common stock they held before the merger. A regulated utility, CenterPoint Energy became one of the largest U. S. energy delivery companies, in late 2002, CenterPoint distributed the stock of Reliant Resources, Inc. to CenterPoint shareholders. This spin-off created Reliant Resources with a strategy to provide competitive wholesale and its businesses included power generation and retail energy services in Texas newly deregulated electricity market. On the wholesale side, Reliant owned, had an interest in, in January 2007, the Texas electricity market became fully deregulated, and Reliant began to offer an array of products, flexible service options, and pricing arrangements to a variety of customers. At this time, Reliant was the second largest mass market electricity provider in the state of Texas, with a revenue of $10.9 billion. On May 1,2009, Reliant Energys retail electricity business was purchased by NRG Energy, the retail group retained the name Reliant Energy and the surviving wholesale business was renamed RRI Energy, Inc. The new company, named GenOn Energy, would be based in Houston but led by Mirants Chairman, at that time, Muller would retire and Mark Jacobs, the president and COO of RRI Energy, would become CEO of GenOn. The new company had a capitalization of about $3 billion
9.
Marsh & McLennan Companies
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Marsh & McLennan Companies was ranked 29th on the 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek 50, the magazines annual ranking of the S&P 500s top 50 performing companies. The firm was established in 1905 and is considered the largest insurance broker in the world by revenue, burroughs, Marsh & McLennan was formed by Henry W. Marsh and Donald R. McLennan in Chicago in 1905. It was renamed as Marsh & McLennan in 1906, the reinsurance firm Guy Carpenter & Company was acquired in 1923 a year after its founding by Guy Carpenter. In 1975, it acquired the human resources consulting firm Mercer, in 1997, it bought Johnson & Higgins, shortly after, it bought Sedgwick. On October 11,2001, Marsh established a consulting practice specializing in terrorism. Marsh also announced a partnership with Control Risks Group to provide political risk assessment, on July 8,2004, Marsh completed the acquisition of Kroll Inc. Jeffrey W. Greenberg called it an important strategic step, the company had employed terrorism expert John ONeill, formerly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. CEO Jeffrey W. Greenberg resigned several weeks later, the suit was ultimately settled out of court. On January 31,2005, Marsh & Mclennan agreed on a settlement for its bid-rigging practices. In July 2007, Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. was ranked first in Business Insurances worlds largest brokers list, on September 14,2007, Brian M. Storms, the CEO of Marshs insurance brokerage unit, resigned. As Michael G. Cherkasky explained his departure, we now need a different set of leadership and operational skills. At the time of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building, their offices spanned the entire impact zone, from floors 93 to 99. Everybody present in the offices at the time of the died. Marsh & McLennan Companies is composed of two business segments, Risk and Insurance Services, and Consulting. The Risk and Insurance Services segment includes Marsh and Guy Carpenter, the Consulting segment includes Mercer and Oliver Wyman. Marsh, which provides insurance broking and risk management consulting, edward Hanway Willis Towers Watson Official website
