Federal facilities in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi will get cleaner electricity soon, as the government works towards its goal of carbon pollution-free electricity (CFE) for federal operations by 2030.

On Tuesday, the General Services Administration and Southern Company — a gas and electric utility — signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for federal facilities in Southern Company’s territory to buy more CFE to work towards the government’s sustainability goals.

At a signing event in Washington, GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said that long-term partnerships and collaboration are critical to help achieve the government’s sustainability goals.

“You don’t always see GSA and the Defense Department standing next to each other asking for the same thing,” Carnahan said. “We’re talking about really trying to move markets and to be smart about the way we consolidate our demand to make it easier to be able to meet our carbon-free needs. So, I want everybody to understand these goals are big, but they are not a pipe dream. We are on our way to getting this done and it’s these kinds of partnerships that are going to make it happen.”

The agreement comes after the Biden administration issued its Federal Sustainability Plan in December 2021 with goals of 100% CFE for federal operations by 2030 with half of it 24/7 as well as goals to electrify its fleet of vehicles and reach net-zero emissions for federal buildings.

GSA will work with Southern Company and other utility providers to help achieve this goal. This is the fourth MOU GSA has signed. Federal facilities in Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia can or will be able to buy clean energy via the agreements. The government is working with more utility companies to add additional areas to purchase clean energy by its 2030 deadline.

Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment said that partnerships within government and with industry are important to accomplish these goals. She also discussed the scale of the Army’s facilities and why clean energy is important for its mission.

While the Air Force and Navy primarily have greenhouse gas emissions from fuel, for the Army it’s buildings.

“We’re committed to using carbon-free energy to support the national defense mission,” Jacobson said “Carbon-free energy generation on base, particularly when distributed and integrated into a modernized grid with battery storage and upgraded transmission lines is the best way to improve our installations’ resilience against the threats of climate change. The reliability of the commercial grid is also incredibly important to our mission because we must be ready to deploy forces worldwide from our installations at a moment’s notice and we need to be able to do that under all conditions. So disruptions to the commercial grid can slow or halt our ability to train and deploy and that is why this presents a national security threat.”

The federal government has more than 300,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles and is the nation’s largest energy consumer, according to GSA. Additionally, the federal government has more than 370 million square feet of office space. According to Carnahan and Andrew Mayock, the federal chief sustainability officer with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the federal government wants to use its size and purchasing power to lead by example and help create and shape a market for this type of energy and electricity.

Mayock said that since President Joe Biden’s executive order to electrify the federal fleet and to put all of the government’s operations onto clean energy as a whole, there has been good progress.

“What we’ve seen over the course of that year, moving from the policy framework is the doing and the acting; a number of MOUs, putting us on a pathway from the approximately 40% carbon-free electricity that we have today to 100% by 2030,” Mayock said. “So I want to thank the Department of Defense. I want to thank GSA for your leadership and standing here today and personifying how strong our pathway is now. And I want to thank Southern Company, for stepping up and joining as a partner and helping us to go execute that vision that President Biden laid out on day one, and we’re executing here today.”

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Agencies may need to purchase as many as 30,000 zero-emission vehicles annually to meet the Biden administration’s green government goals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last week.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order last December directing agencies to buy only zero-emission light-duty vehicles starting in 2027, and buy only zero-emission vehicles across all categories by 2035.

GAO estimates that Biden’s executive order affects about 380,000 vehicles in the federal fleet. The federal fleet in fiscal 2020 included more than 610,000 non-tactical vehicles in the U.S.

About 69% of the federal fleet are light-duty vehicles, including SUVs, pickup trucks and sedans. Less than 1% of the federal fleet is zero-emission vehicles — less than 1,600 in total.

GAO finds the federal fleet, which includes everything from sedans to ambulances and buses, traveled 4 billion miles and consumed more than 360 million gallons of fuel in fiscal 2020.

The General Services Administration told GAO that every year, agencies replace an average of about 8% of their fleet.

Agencies in fiscal 2021 ordered about 45,000 vehicles, the equivalent of replacing 12% of their fleets. Of those, agencies purchased 138 battery electric vehicles and 119 plug-in hybrid vehicles.

About half of the 33,000 light-duty vehicles agencies purchased in 2021 had an electric vehicle alternative offered by GSA.

GAO  found that GSA so far lacked electric vehicle options for larger models of SUVs and pickup trucks. GSA officials, however, told GAO they’re optimistic there will be electric vehicle options for all light-duty vehicle types within the next five years.

GSA in April established 16 Blanket Purchase Agreements for vehicle supply equipment.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan told GAO that these BPAs “ensure that agencies have access to the infrastructure required to charge their plug-in hybrid and battery-operated vehicles.”

“GSA hopes these efforts will make acquiring and installing EV charging infrastructure easier for federal agencies and is easier to help them meet their EV mission needs,” Carnahan wrote.

To support widespread electric vehicle use, GSA estimates the federal government may need over 100,000 charging ports across the U.S.

GAO found access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure is generally limited at federal facilities, and widespread fleet electrification will require a “significant investment” in charging infrastructure.

Federal agencies, as of March 2022, owned and operated over 4,000 charging ports in less than 500 cities, according to data collected by the Energy Department.

More than 25% of all federally owned charging infrastructure is based in California, while the District of Columbia, which has more federal vehicles than any other ZIP code, only has 110 charging ports at 35 locations.

While federal agencies own vehicles in more than 10,000 ZIP codes, the top 300 ZIP codes contain almost half of the vehicles in federal fleets, and about 70% of the federal fleet is located in urban areas.

Meanwhile, the Energy Department and the Department of the Navy account for almost half of all federally owned charging infrastructure.

GAO found that in 2021, federal vehicles traveled an average of 6,000 miles a year, although usage varied by region.

Federal vehicles located in rural areas, for example, were generally driven 25% further, or about 1,500 miles more per year.

While federal agencies own vehicles in more than 10,000 ZIP codes, the top 300 ZIP codes contain almost half of the vehicles in federal fleets, and about 70% of the federal fleet is located in urban areas.

GSA generally agreed with GAO’s findings, but added that federal vehicle use was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The exact effect is uncertain since reported annual mileage was decreasing before the pandemic every year from 2017 to 2019,” GAO wrote.

Congress and multiple administrations have sought to reduce the federal government’s reliance on gas-powered vehicles and cut its greenhouse gas emissions over the past 30 years.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.), House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Government Operation Subcommittee Chairman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) requested GAO conduct the report.

GAO said the electric vehicle market is expected to show continued growth, considering federal, state and local government incentives to purchase electric vehicles.

“However, electrifying federal fleets represents a significant transformation in the federal government’s approach to vehicle procurement and will require a shift in perceptions about their capability to adequately meet mission needs in terms of performance and driving range,” GAO wrote.

Electric vehicles generally have a higher price tag than their gas-powered counterparts. GAO said this would require agencies to make a larger spending commitment upfront, but may recover some costs through lower maintenance and fuel costs for EVs.

GSA officials told GAO that the barrier to greater purchase of electric vehicles “would continue to decline as production increases and manufacturing costs decline.”

Congress and the Biden administration have pressured the Postal Service to embrace the White House’s climate goals and invest in electric vehicles.

However, GAO wrote in its report that USPS “is not subject to the executive order,” because it is not an executive agency.

Meanwhile, USPS received $3 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to expand on its plans to electrify its fleet.

Maloney is asking USPS how many more electric vehicles it’ll be able to buy with the $3 billion it received, and how it will build out the necessary charging infrastructure.

Maloney is also asking whether USPS plans to make its chargers available for public use.

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The White House Council on Environmental Quality released guidance this week directing agencies and the federal government as a whole to “develop new resources, trainings and systems to equip and inspire the federal workforce.”

“Agencies must develop, conduct, support and promote training, education and engagement activities that equip their workforce with the skills and tools necessary to achieve the sustainability objectives of the EO,” CEQ wrote in its guidance.

The guidance also outlines steps agencies must take to align with the administration’s ultimate goal of reaching net-zero emissions across all federal operations by 2050.

Along the way to meeting this goal, the administration expects agencies to source 100% carbon pollution-free electricity on a net annual basis by 2030, purchase only zero-emission vehicles by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions across all federal buildings by 2045.

CEQ said the agency actions mandated in its guidance will set the foundation “for a decade of action to cut [greenhouse gas] emissions from federal operations and drive greater sustainability governmentwide.”

“Achieving these ambitious commitments requires action by each and every agency, starting today,” CEQ wrote.

CEQ states it will decide on metrics to track the development of a climate and sustainability-focused workforce no later than fiscal 2023, in partnership with the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management.

OPM, meanwhile, is working on a report analyzing the federal workforce’s role in climate adaptation and sustainability. The forthcoming report will specifically look at the state of agency engagement, employee training and leadership capabilities needed to achieve the administration’s green-government goals.

The guidance directs all agencies to develop human capital planning strategies to meet the goals of the executive order, and to provide metrics for meeting these goals.

That includes incorporating sustainability and climate action goals into employee performance plans, as well as identifying the “staffing, training and associated resources necessary to implement and achieve the goals” of the executive order.

Sustainable federal building goals

The administration requires all new large federal construction and building modernization projects under design in fiscal 2022 or later to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, “and where feasible,” to become net-zero water and waste buildings.

“The goal is to increase efficiency, optimize performance, reduce emissions, encourage responsible use of materials and resources, ensure the health of occupants, reduce waste, and increase agency resiliency and adaptation to climate risks,” the guidance states.

This requirement applies to federal buildings and modernization projects that encompass more than 25,000 gross square feet. Agencies are expected to track progress toward this goal annually.

New federal buildings under construction must also meet or exceed the government’s sustainable design and operations principles.

“Energy efficiency, electrification, on-site renewable energy, and on-site energy storage can support agency efforts to achieve both sustainable federal building requirements and net-zero emissions goals,” the guidance states.

CEQ directs agencies to use sustainable building materials for the construction and modernization of federal buildings, and to include the necessary charging infrastructure to support a fully electric federal vehicle fleet.

The guidance also outlines considerations agencies must take when planning new facilities. These include ensuring federal facilities integrate with the existing local infrastructure, and ensure broad access to public transportation.

“It is the policy of the federal government to promote sustainable locations for federal workplaces and strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in which they are located,” the guidance states.

The administration is also directing agencies to optimize their leased real estate and to consolidate their office space when possible, in order to “avoid unnecessary real property expenditures and reduce emissions, energy and water usage, and waste.”

Resources under Inflation Reduction Act

The guidance will also help set into motion agency spending under the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.

The $740 billion legislation tees up multi-year hiring and training investments at several agencies, including the Interior Department and its National Park Service, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CEQ.

The legislation gives the Postal Service $3 billion to purchase electric vehicles and install the charging infrastructure to support them at USPS-owned or leased facilities.

The General Services Administration gets $975 million to support emerging sustainable technologies, and an additional $250 million to convert federal facilities to “high-performance green buildings.”

GSA also receives $2.15 billion for low-carbon materials in the construction and upgrade of federal buildings, especially those that “have substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions” compared to industry standard materials, as determined by the EPA.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, which already serves as a coordinating body for projects under the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, gets $350 million for environmental review improvement.

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Procurement power is a major pillar of the Biden administration’s Federal Sustainability Plan. As the country’s single biggest landlord and one of its largest energy consumers, the federal government’s purchasing power can either drive markets toward energy efficient innovation, or maintain the status quo.

Dorothy Robyn has worked at the two largest real property holders in federal government, as a former commissioner of the Public Buildings Service at the General Services Administration, and as a former deputy undersecretary for Installations and the Environment at the Defense Department. When making federal facilities more energy efficient, she said the experiences differed in that, GSA sees buildings as its mission while DoD does not.

“The mission of the Public Building Service, which I ran, is to efficiently operate federal buildings — that that is their mission. And they do it extremely well,” she said. This is in spite of the fact that GSA does not have full access to the rents they receive from agencies, as the money goes into the Federal Buildings Fund, which Congress can — and has — appropriate to non-GSA expenses.

GSA did receive $3.375 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in buildings with low-carbon materials and sustainable technologies and to leverage emerging clean technologies to achieve greater carbon reductions. Of those funds, $2.15 billion will go to low-embodied carbon materials in construction projects; $975 million will support emerging and sustainable technologies; and $250 million is to convert more sites into High Performance Green Buildings, GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a statement after the law’s signing by President Joe Biden.

DoD sees things differently.

“Military bases are important to the DoD mission, but DoD doesn’t do a great job of taking care of its buildings. And it certainly doesn’t do a good job of improving their energy efficiency,” Robyn said. “Military services simply don’t see the link between energy efficient buildings and their mission in the same way that they do see the link between renewable energy on their bases and mission.”

Aligning clean energy and other sustainability goals with agency missions is a central recommendation to her latest report, published this month for the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Robyn said this is needed, along with appropriating more funds for building upgrades, changing “perverse budget rules” and overhauling the federal procurement process.

“Sustainability needs to become a core competence of procurement officials,” she said. “But in the short run, the administration needs to shore up the provisions that are already in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, but that tend to get overlooked, calling for lifecycle costing and focus on energy efficiency.”

She echoed recommendations from Steve Schooner, the Nash & Cibinic professor of Government Procurement Law at The George Washington University Law School. During his appearance on Off the Shelf back in January, Schooner said the pressure on contracting officers to go after lowest price, buy American and redistribute a certain percentage of dollars to small and disadvantaged businesses makes it hard to prioritize sustainability and lifecycle costs.

He said dropping the “tyranny of low price” would take cultural change. But the FAR could be amended to make it easier to procure green technology, such as cleaning up guidance in Part 7, requiring greenhouse gas benchmarks in Part 15, or upgrading Part 46 to verify that contractors reduce emissions like they promise to do — among others.

Meanwhile, DoD, GSA and NASA did solicit public comments in October to determine how to measure the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions in procurement decisions. Despite what Robyn described as shortcomings in the military’s approach to building efficiency, she held up DoD, NASA and the Department of Health and Human Services as examples of innovative buyers in her report. Government can inspire market demand for greener technology and sustainability metrics, but only if it can stomach the higher upfront costs for those innovations.

What these agencies had in their favor, she argued, was that innovation was indeed part of their respective missions, thus giving them the financial leeway to spend on novel technologies or make trailblazing procurements.

“Agencies can do that when something is in their mission interests, because they can get the funding to pay more for the technology upfront, when they are the early adopter of it, they typically have to pay more for it, and then they are able to bring the cost down,” she said.

For example, DoD and NASA spurred “the commercialization of integrated circuits, computers, jet engines, Earth orbiting satellites, solar photovoltaics (PV), and many other technologies that have enhanced mission performance. In 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) followed a similar playbook in committing to buy hundreds of millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine that did not yet exist,” she wrote.

This better ensures that agencies stick to their benchmarks even through changing administrations, as well.

Energy savings performance contracts are one solution to third-party financing of federal building efficiency upgrades, as the energy service company would install and maintain building equipment at no up-front cost to the agency in exchange for a share of the utility savings. Initially, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Budget Office opposed ESPCs as a form of federal borrowing. Throughout the 1990s, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House sought to increase ESPC use. In 1998, OMB changed its policy on the grounds that payment occurs only if the utility savings materialize. However, CBO’s continued opposition prevents further expansion of ESPCs, according to a 2016 report from the Task Force on Federal Energy Management at DOE.

This example, among others, led Robyn to recommend that OMB and CBO examine how budget scorekeeping rules constrain efforts to achieve sustainability goals.

“[The] OMB approach to budget scoring of federal investment in federal real property … you have to pay for it up front. The federal budget is a cash budget, there is no capital budget, [the] kind of budget that corporations have and many state and local governments have for making long-term investments in infrastructure, or other capital assets,” she said. “And so if you’re GSA, you have to fund a $300 million building renovation entirely upfront. That’s like trying to buy a house without access to a mortgage. It’s very difficult, and I think it’s problematic, I think we should change the scoring rules.”

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The Inflation Reduction Act, however, cleared its biggest obstacle on Sunday, when the Senate passed it in a 51-50 floor vote after an all-night session of votes, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

The legislation would give the IRS $80 billion over the next decade to rebuild its workforce, having seen its headcount shrink after years of budget cuts.

The Postal Service stands out as one of the bill’s biggest benefactors when it comes to sustainable infrastructure.

The agency would receive $3 billion for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, after it recently announced it would buy more electric vehicles as part of its next-generation fleet than it originally planned.

More broadly, the bill directs federal agencies administering the bill’s climate and environment spending to ramp up hiring and training for their employees.

It also outlines a major investment in upgrading federal buildings to make them more sustainable and resilient to the impacts of climate change.’

The bill’s estimated $740 billion in spending is a fraction of the $3.5 trillion package President Joe Biden envisioned in the Build Back Better Act, but the president said the bill makes the “largest investment ever in combatting the existential crisis of climate change.”

“I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does — period,” Biden said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday called the bill the “boldest climate package in U.S. history.”

“The Senate has now passed the most significant bill to fight the climate change crisis ever,” Schumer said at a press conference Sunday following the bill’s passage.

The House is expected to vote on the bill this Friday. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called the legislation “one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in years.”

USPS gets $3B for electric vehicles

The legislation gives USPS $1.29 billion to purchase electric vehicles, and the remaining $1.71 billion for the “purchase, design and installation of the requisite infrastructure” to support electric delivery vehicles — either at USPS-owned or leased facilities.

USPS has until September 2031 to spend the funds, “in addition to amounts” otherwise appropriated by Congress.

The USPS inspector general’s office would receive an additional $15 million to oversee the agency’s spending.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) praised the Senate for passing the bill with “committee priorities for which I have long fought,” including the $3 billion for USPS electric vehicles.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is a transformative opportunity to achieve historic progress on issues championed by Democrats, including reducing health care and energy costs and fighting the climate crisis,” Maloney said.

USPS spokeswoman Kim Frum said last week that the agency expects the “electric portion of our fleet to evolve upward,” if its financial circumstances improve.

“We have been monitoring the interest of Congress in funding an increase in electrification and should funding be enacted we will assess the impact on our plans,” Frum said.

USPS recently announced it will, for now, only plan to buy the 50,000 next-generation delivery vehicles (NGDVs) it ordered in March, the minimum outlined in its contract with Oshkosh Defense.

The agency, however, now ensures no less than 50% of those custom-built vehicles will be electric vehicles.

To replace its aging vehicle fleet more immediately, USPS plans to purchase 34,500 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) vehicles over a two-year period.

All told, USPS expects 40% of these 84,500 vehicles will be electric.

GSA to invest in ‘high-performance green buildings’

The General Services Administration would get $975 million to support emerging sustainable technologies, and an additional $250 million to convert federal facilities to “high-performance green buildings.”

GSA would also receive $2.15 billion for low-carbon materials in the construction and upgrade of federal buildings, especially those that “have substantially lower levels of embodied greenhouse gas emissions” compared to industry standard materials, as determined by the Environmental Protect Agency.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, which already serves as a coordinating body for projects under the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, would get $350 million for environmental review improvement.

NPS gets funds to hire, address maintenance backlog

The National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management would get $250 million to manage the “conservation, protection, and resiliency of lands and resources” they oversee.

The National Park Service would get $500 million through September 2030 to hire front-line employees for the National Park System, or national historic or national scenic trails it manages.

NPS would get an additional $200 million through September 2026 to carry out priority deferred maintenance projects.

The Interior Department, more broadly, would get $150 million through September 2026 for tasks that include hiring and training employees, developing environmental data and information systems, and improving community engagement.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would get $125 million to rebuild and restore units of the National Wildlife Refuge System, as well as state wildlife management areas.

The money would go toward addressing the threat of invasive species, increasing the resiliency and capacity of habitats and infrastructure to withstand weather events and reducing the amount of damage caused by weather events.

The bill allows USFWS to spend the money on its direct operations, or award grants and contracts to outside parties.

NOAA gets forecasting, ‘hurricane hunter’ aircraft

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would get $150 million through September 2026 for the construction of new facilities, facilities in need of replacement, piers, marine operations facilities, and fisheries laboratories.

NOAA would get an additional $20 million “to conduct more efficient, accurate, and timely reviews for planning, permitting and approval processes through the hiring and training of personnel, and the purchase of technical and scientific services and new equipment, and to improve agency transparency, accountability, and public engagement.”

NOAA would also get $150 million to remain available until September 2026 “to accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public as it pertains to the ocean and atmospheric processes related to weather, coasts, oceans, and climate,” under the 2017 Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act.

It would also receive $190 million for the procurement of additional high-performance computing, data processing capacity, data management, and storage assets to carry out its duties under the 1991 High-Performance Computing Act.

NOAA would also get $100 million to purchase hurricane hunter aircraft under the 2017 Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act

White House training, data investments

The Energy Department would get $115 million to spend through September 2026, part of which would go toward hiring and training personnel and equipment to support environmental review.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality would get $32.5 million to spend through September 2026 to support data collection efforts related to disproportionate negative environmental harms and climate impacts and cumulative impacts of pollution and temperature support.

CEQ would get an additional $30 million to train personnel, develop programmatic environmental documents, developing tools, guidance, and techniques to improve stakeholder and community engagement.

The Office of Management and Budget would get $25 million to oversee the implantation of the act, as well as “track labor, equity and environmental standards and performance.”

The Government Accountability Office would get $25 million to support the oversight and distribution of funds, and “whether the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the funds … are equitable.”

The Environmental Protection Agency would get $40 million to spend through September 2026, to develop “efficient, accurate, and timely reviews for permitting and approval processes.”

The bill allows the agency will spend the funds on hiring and training of personnel, as well as the purchase of new equipment for environmental analysis and “other analysis tools, techniques, and guidance to improve agency transparency, accountability, and public engagement.”

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The Biden administration has made it an objective to decarbonize federal operations in the near future. One of the initiatives from the Energy Department to try and make that happen is a $6 million award to certain national laboratories to expand the use of geothermal heating and cooling at federal sites. To learn more about this plan, and just how much this technology could help the White House reach its goal. Eric White for the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to Alexis McKittrick, the DOE’s geothermal technology offices program manager.

Interview transcript:

Alexis McKittrick: The backgrounds here is the federal government is really looking to lead by example in the renewable energy space, including deploying renewable energy technologies, and decarbonizing our own infrastructure. Out of over 7,000 U.S. facilities, federal facilities, about 450 of those campuses make up 75% of the federal government’s energy use. And so from a geothermal heating and cooling perspective, this project is looking to convert even if we can only convert a couple of those large campuses to geothermal, we’ll have the opportunity to significantly decarbonize the federal infrastructure, and increase resilience and energy security for key federal sites in the process.

Eric White: So would only certain federal sites be able to do this? And I guess I can parlay that into the question of how does geothermal energy work? It’s been a word that’s been tossed around, but I would like to kill the buzziness of it now and have you actually explained it to me.

Alexis McKittrick: Sure, will do. Let’s tackle that first, the technology piece, and then we’ll jump into what sites might be candidates here. So geothermal resources are essentially reservoirs of hot water and rock that exists at varying temperatures and varying depths in the Earth’s surface. So it is the heat beneath our feet, if you will. For geothermal heating and cooling, we’re looking at a couple of potential uses of that subsurface heat. Geothermal heat pumps or ground source heat pumps are I would say kind of the most commonly known geothermal heating and cooling technology. They’re deployed about 2.5 million different residences in the U.S. actually use geothermal heat pumps now, and a number of districts and community systems use them in network as well. And how they operate is they have essentially an underground component and an above-ground component. In the underground component, you have piping that is run underground, that is utilizing the relatively constant ambient temperature in the shallow subsurface. So think about 65 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit, right? That shallow subsurface temperature of about 70 degrees Fahrenheit allows you to provide cooling in the summer, as well as heating in the winter, by doing heat exchange with that shallow subsurface. And by shallow I mean kind of tens of feet to potentially hundreds of feet underground for that piping. And then as you’re working a fluid through that piping and doing that heat exchange, essentially on the surface, you have a geothermal heat pump that allows that fluid to transfer the heating or cooling to the building air and then you have kind of a traditional HVAC system and each back blower that then is moving that air of course through the building to supply the heating or cooling. So one I think thing I’d like to demystify is the idea that geothermal is only a heating solution. Because I would say honestly, the most commonly known geothermal applications actually year-round heating and cooling in the form of these geothermal heat pumps.

Eric White: Yeah I think it’s because you think of geothermal first thought that comes to my mind is a hot spring or something like that. So everyone thinks that, but yeah, the aspect of cooling is something that yeah, it’s not touched on a lot.

Alexis McKittrick: And if I may, there are what are called geothermal direct use systems that do use deeper geothermal resources that are hotter. So I mentioned that 70 degrees Fahrenheit-ish for geothermal heat pumps, you can go thousands of feet into the subsurface and tap hotter temperatures, so 100 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, but then you take that warm fluid via a well bring it up to the surface and use heat exchange primarily for heating. And that can be larger district or community systems like the one that we see in Boise, for example. That I think supplies hot water to 90 different buildings in Boise, Idaho. And then the cooled water after you’re finished with it can be completely returned to the earth in a closed system. So it’s a really great application, but that is the kind that is more geothermal heating focused. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that geothermal can also be used for electricity generation as well. So, there are geothermal power plants, within the U.S. right now that are producing clean, renewable electricity to our grid. And we’re primarily focused on heating and cooling today, but want to make sure that that powerful application, geothermal is out there as well.

Eric White: All right, you’ve made the sale. So what is the geographic limitations of geothermal that you were about to get into?

Alexis McKittrick: So what’s great about geothermal heating and cooling is it really is a 50-state solution, particularly when you’re talking about geothermal heat pumps. They operate actually in all 50 states in the U.S. now. And we are increasingly seeing this emerging trend of these networked systems that are kind of called district scale or community scale, geothermal heating and cooling systems that have emerged primarily on college campuses in the U.S., but are starting to emerge more in the private sector and communities as well. And these systems essentially use kind of common networked underground loops. Either one loop leveraging that constant temperature we were talking about, for individual heat pumps, or two loops, one that is primarily for warm and one premium really for cold, that can essentially provide heating and cooling to an entire campus. When you combine this with, again, some fields essentially, of piping infrastructure that can run underground, sort of in mass and provide that larger scale heating and cooling effect that similar to the heat pump, one that I was mentioning earlier, just scaled up to a district or campus scale. So that’s one thing that we really think is powerful about this technology is that it really can be applied anywhere in the United States as a renewable energy solution, and in particular, for ability heating and cooling.

Eric White: So is it just the infrastructure costs is the reason why we don’t see it in more places? Or was the technology just not there yet to make it feasible?

Alexis McKittrick: Sure. So capital costs associated with these systems have historically been been one of the barriers. I think we’re seeing a couple of really interesting and unique solutions emerge to that, in particular, some industry partners that are looking at potentially partnering with utilities, for example, as the space grows and emerges, and as I mentioned, this is a trend that is is catching on in the U.S. So I really think Eric, that over the next kind of five to 10 years, we’re going to see some different business models that recognize the utility of these systems and the broad applicability of them, and help reduce that overall kind of capital costs associated with these systems, because in addition to being 50 states, they reduce emissions compared to fossil fuel, they’re reducing the load on the the electric grid, and in particular, be able to reduce peak load times. And they can be combined with other renewable energy technologies, like solar, for example. So geothermal heat pumps do draw small line of electricity. But if say you have solar panels that can supply that electricity, you can essentially create a complete renewable energy system, which is a powerful message. And something that we want to, like I said, lead by example, within the federal government, which kind of brings us back to this award in particular, which is focused on applying these systems to federal infrastructure.

Eric White: Yeah, that’s a nice segue into the research aspect of things. What can you tell me about the work that the Energy Department’s own national labs are doing? And maybe you know, if there’s anything else that you want to add in, you know, from the industry side that you’re seeing as well?

Alexis McKittrick: Sure. So I’ll first say that the driver for this work, and what we’re calling the Federal Geothermal Partnership Initiative or Fed Geo Partnership is supporting Executive Order 14057, which is the executive order asking the federal government to to decarbonize its infrastructure. We’re looking to achieve carbon-pollution-free electricity sector by 2035, and net zero emissions economywide no later than 2050. In order to do that the federal government needs to lead by example, in this space, and again, looking to deploy, us this Fed Geo Partnership’s initiative to specifically deploy geothermal heating and cooling technologies to federal sites. This is a partnership that the Geothermal Technologies Office, which is the group that I work in, partners with the Federal Energy Management Program, or FEMP. And they’re the part of Department of Energy that’s responsible for tracking renewable energy installations at federal facilities. Through our work with them and their their deployment focus work, we identified a need for technical assistance at federal sites to consider geothermal heating and cooling to do the exploration that designed the site testing the characterization on sites that will help these federal sites determine if they’re a candidate for geothermal heating and cooling. And so we’ve recently made an award, as you said to our national laboratories, and in particular, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They’re going to partner with a number of other labs that have different expertise related to building codes to design of these systems, to understanding loads on the grids, and the impact that these systems can have within the federal space. And they’re going to work to do that site characterization and design work at the different federal sites that we’ll look to move forward with. In addition to labs, though, I want to stress that what’s really great about this award in this project is that Oakridge is also working with two universities that have experienced in this space. And they brought in the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association, or IGSHPA, which is essentially the nonprofit that is supporting private sector in this in this space. And so we’re going to have a lot of private sector expertise that we can leverage as part of these systems and these designs, in addition to the combined power of our national laboratory. So it’s a pretty powerful award.

Eric White: All right. And last question, yes or no, that EO is framed in the Energy Department right now. And it’s planted on the wall.

Alexis McKittrick: You know, if I had been into the office more often, I probably wouldn’t be able to verify. But I imagine that it is for sure. We all are, as I said, really excited for the federal government to lead by example and the Department of Energy has a really big role in that.

The post Yet another avenue for trying to make federal buildings go green first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Mayock said last week that the administration’s Federal Sustainability Plan will put the federal government “back in a position where we’re leading by example” on climate goals for the private sector to emulate.

“The government basically sat out sustainability for four years, and at best, things stayed in place, and at worst, we went backward. So we’re in a rebuilding phase and a learning phase,” Mayock said on June 28 at the Federal Sustainability Forum, hosted by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Digital Climate Alliance.

President Biden, as part of an executive order he signed last year, expects agencies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050. That includes a 65% reduction by 2030.

“We’re not getting where we need to go, unless we focus on how we scale. And how we scale is through technology,” Mayock said.

Melanie Nakagawa, special assistant to the president and senior director for climate and energy at the National Security Council, said the leadership of at least 20 agencies is committed to implementing the administration’s clean-energy goals across the federal government.

“It’s really hard to find a department or agency that isn’t willing to take the call or engage,” Nakagawa said.

While agencies with the biggest climate impact are moving ahead on the administration’s sustainability goals, Mayock said the Federal Sustainability Plan focuses on making green initiatives a top priority governmentwide.

“We need to start acting and delivering as an enterprise, versus the deeply federated federal government that we are today. There are lots of efficiencies and lots of actions that we can take when we work better and more closely together,” he said.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality in May launched an interagency task force with the General Services Administration, the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop the first-ever Federal Building Performance Standards.

The standards will establish metrics, targets and tracking methods to reach federal carbon emissions goals. Mayock said the standards, which he said will be publicly released in two or three months, will set standard performance goals across more than 300,000 federal buildings.

“The ways that we’ve executed this sustainability plan and past versions of it over past administrations, that didn’t speak to the decarbonization moment that we’re in today,” Mayock said.

While the administration is making government more sustainable where possible, several administration officials said some federal climate goals will rely more on cooperation with the private sector.

Mayock said emerging sustainability technologies, for example, will be crucial to meeting some of the federal government’s climate goals.

“A lot of the technology, but not all of the technology, is where we want to be. How do we handle that moment in the marketplace to make progress now, while we’re all pushing for the technology that we need to be delivered along the pathway?” Mayock said.

Tanuj Deora, CEQ’s director for clean energy, said the administration is trying to use its collective buying power to support sustainable energy industries but is also trying to overcome supply constraints in the market for goods like electric vehicles.

“We don’t want to be consumptive of the market’s ability to supply. We don’t want to crowd out other folks who are trying to invest. I know with electric vehicles right now, one of the biggest challenges GSA has is that the vehicles just aren’t available,” Deora said.

Deora said a pandemic-era shortage of semiconductor chips has limited the supply of all vehicles, including electric vehicles, for federal agencies to purchase.

White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under the Obama administration, said last year that less than 1% of the federal fleet is plug-in electric vehicles, and that agencies bought only 200 electric vehicles in 2020.

Kinga Hydras, a sustainable program design expert with GSA’s Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, said electrifying the federal fleet also impacts plans to improve the energy efficiency of federal buildings.

“It’s not just buying the vehicles, it’s also creating the infrastructure and doing it in a smart way.  Now that it all plugs into our federal building portfolio, then how does that impact our energy consumption? How do we go about partnering with the utilities in the servicing markets, and maybe utilize the electric vehicle fleet as backup power. A lot of questions, a lot of opportunities out there,” Hydras said.

Hydras said GSA’s federal building portfolio within the Washington, D.C. metro area has reduced energy consumption by 60% through integrated energy retrofit projects.

GSA manages a portfolio of 370 million rentable square feet of space for more than a million federal employees. Its Federal Acquisition Service, meanwhile, oversees about $75 billion worth of annual contracts.

“We are all in it together. As most federal agencies and large organizations have silos, we do have silos too, but this aggressive goal brought us all together,” Hydras said.

The Energy Department, meanwhile, partnering with GSA to spend $13 million to retrofit and upgrade 17 federal facilities to reduce emissions and energy costs.

“We believe technology is way ahead. We see in the marketplace the technology’s there. We need to be smart about implementing and using everything in our tool house,” Hydras said.

Hydras pointed to the New Carrollton Federal Building as an example of a successful retrofit project. The building went through upgrades between 2012 to 201, which reduced the building’s energy consumption by 62% and cut water consumption in half.

Deora said federal agencies can better leverage data to find more buildings that stand to benefit the most from these sustainable upgrades, much like the New Carrollton Federal Building.

“It’s just a great example. There was one great value case, how can we take that and then replicate that and make that system-wide? We need to think about the value stack from not just energy or storage or whatever, but from the data itself,” Deora said.

The Biden administration is also looking to accelerate the pace of federal permitting and environmental reviews for thousands of infrastructure projects under the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The White House in May released a permitting action plan outlining ways agencies can ensure infrastructure spending projects remain on time and on budget.

However, Cole Simons, a policy adviser for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said that more federal permitting reforms to are needed to prevent wasteful infrastructure spending.

“We need to eliminate some of the duplicity that is in the process. We’ve got issues right now, where Army Corps [of Engineers] says yes. Six months later, the EPA drops in and says ‘Just kidding, no,’ and there’s already been steel put in the ground, or there’s already been a process started, that just creates more waste, both from having already started a process and having to end it and you’re just like, ‘Well, what do we do with stuff that’s already there?’ as well as a lot of financial waste and a lot of uncertainty provided to anybody who seeks to develop in the U.S,” Simons said.

The post Federal Sustainability Plan ‘rebuilding’ momentum on green government goals first appeared on Federal News Network.

The targets are part of the service’s new climate change strategy, which the Navy released on Tuesday. The document follows the broader Defense Department strategy, which braces the military against the future effects of extreme weather and attempts to mitigate some of the Pentagon’s impacts on the environment.

“The Navy is truly in the crosshairs of the climate crisis and it does impact our combat readiness at the Naval Academy and out in the fleet and in the Marine Corps as well too,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee last week. “We’re making great strides to try to come to terms with this.”

Del Toro noted that Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany became the military’s first net-zero base this month, meaning it gets as much power from renewable resources as it does from fossil fuels.

The report laid out a handful of specific targets that will achieve two specific goals: making sure the Navy and its facilities can operate in a world impacted by climate change; and reducing the Navy’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

To reduce waste, the Navy will cut back emissions by 65% by 2050, will get all of its power from carbon pollution-free sources by 2030 and buy zero-emissions vehicles by 2035. All light-duty vehicles will be zero-emission by 2027. The Navy will also reduce emissions from buildings by 50% by 2032 and divert at least half of its waste from landfills by using other methods like composting food.

The Navy has made efforts in the past to cut back on emissions, but never to this extent. In 2016, it launched its Great Green Fleet, which used alternative fuels to power ships and other vehicles.

The service is developing its strategy around DoD’s five lines of effort on climate change. Those include things like climate-informed decision making, where Navy leaders train for situations of extreme weather, and supply chain resilience, in which the Navy invests in companies that support national security and climate benefits.

“The Navy is leveraging public and private innovation in the climate and energy resilience sectors by implementing Silicon Valley-based principles through NavalX Tech Bridges and business accelerators,” the report states. “Tech Bridges attract small and medium businesses using innovation challenges, often teaming with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership organizations and the DoD-funded National Security Innovation Network.”

Last October, the Pentagon took its largest step yet to become more climate conscious by releasing its climate adaptation strategy. DoD announced it will create a climate chief and stated that it will consider climate in every decision it makes from now on.

“Climate change will continue to amplify operational demands on the force, degrade installations and infrastructure, increase health risks to our service members, and could require modifications to existing and planned equipment,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in the plan. “Extreme weather events are already costing the Department billions of dollars and are degrading mission capabilities.”

The post Navy cutting back emissions, moving toward green vehicles in coming years first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Solar panels have a life cycle. The billions of panels covering roofs and once-pristine landscapes and maybe even your office building will all need to be disposed of and replaced at some point. Now the Energy Department has issued an action plan for how to safely and economically handle photovoltaic materials that have worn out. For details, the Energy Department’s photovoltaics program manager, Lenny Tinker joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Tinker, good to have you on.

Lenny Tinker: Thank you very much, nice to be here.

Tom Temin: So I didn’t realize these things don’t last forever, but they don’t what happens? How do they wear out?

Lenny Tinker: Well, there’s a lot of different ways that they can actually wear out. Typically, what happens is that, you know, they’re outside sort of, they’re exposed to like the elements. And so different things can happen through thermal cycling, cracks can propagate, contacts can oxidize. But effectively, the energy output of the system starts to decrease over about 20 to 30 years is the expected lifetime.

Tom Temin: All right, and then inside these materials that actually produce the current, are these hazardous materials? Are they safe to handle? What are the issues?

Lenny Tinker: Well, there are a variety of different materials inside the modules themselves. Mostly, the modules are totally safe. But there are some materials that are used that can be actually dangerous. For example, lead can be used in the solder, like many of the electronics that we all use. And therefore it’s important that people follow EPA regulations and testing for how to deal with the materials.

Tom Temin: Got it. And is the disposal generally carried out by commercial companies locally? Suppose I have a building and there’s a lot of photovoltaics cells, they have to be removed, who does that kind of work in general?

Lenny Tinker: So that work is typically contracted out and the disposal themselves depending on the actual modules being used. So they’re these tests that are regulated by the EPA known as toxicity characteristic leaching protocols, or TCLP. So those modules would be tested, that would then determine how they had to dispose of whether or not they’d be considered hazardous waste, or it could be disposed of as just general landfill waste. And then typically, someone would contract at someone to actually take down the system and then dispose of it appropriately.

Tom Temin: All right, so what are the dangers here and tell us about the action plan, what is the Energy Department trying to do here with the action plan?

Lenny Tinker: So our goal with the action plan is to indicate for the community and to set a direction for how we could be even better than the regulations that I mentioned that are stipulated by the EPA. So we see there’s potentially a possibility to improve the way that materials are disposed of, and actually increase the recycling potential of the entire system. Now, the bulk of a PV system is steel, and aluminum and copper. And the recycling procedures for that are pretty well worked out the current industry, but the modules themselves because they’re composites and composite materials are a little more complicated, there’s some opportunity to figure out how to better recycle and recover the value of those modules. And so in our action plan, we lay out a direction for research that can be done as well as stakeholder engagement, and aggregating data. So everyone’s aware of what’s actually going on with the modules such that we can, you know, make PDS as good for the environment as possible.

Tom Temin: And of course, when you do recycling carefully, and removal and recycling, it can be expensive. And so is the economics of this part of the calculus?

Lenny Tinker: Oh, absolutely. The economics are the foundation of a lot of the decisions that people are making in terms of energy and actually disposal of systems. So right now, recycling can be about almost 10 times as expensive as just general disposal. And so we’re trying to do is look at you know, like I said, how can you better recover value out of the modules when you recycle them? Because that, of course, helps pay for the recycling itself? And also, how can you develop modules and produce them in a way that makes it even easier to separate?

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Lenny Tinker. He’s an Energy Department of photovoltaics program manager, part of the DoD’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. And the materials that are rare that are in these might be outsourced, originally from the United States, is there the possibility that by recycling properly, we could almost develop a source of rare materials from an effect mining the old solar panels right here in the United States?

Lenny Tinker: Absolutely, there’s opportunity to recover rare and valuable materials from photovoltaic systems. The bulk of the system as a whole is, like I said, steel and aluminum and copper. Now, that’s the system. In the modules, there’s some more precious materials such as silver, which is used on the front to collect the electricity. There’s also small amounts of other materials depending on the module, such as tellurium, which could be recovered. The absolute magnitude of what could be recovered from PV systems for a while can be quite low, because the majority of systems deployed right now, over 75% of them have been deployed in the last five years. And and with an expected lifetime of 25 to 30 years or maybe even longer, there’s not a lot to quote unquote mine now. But that being said, there is an opportunity to recover those materials when the time comes for decommissioning.

Tom Temin: Sure, mining was my word, but the idea they could at some point in the future be recovered and reused to make new panels?

Lenny Tinker: Absolutely. One of the main goals of the Department of Energy SET office is to make sure that we recover as much value out of the system, which helps the economics on the levelized basis for electricity. So it can be even cheaper than it is today.

Tom Temin: All right, and this action plan then who is it specifically aimed at?

Lenny Tinker: The action plan is aimed at all of our stakeholders, it’s a way for us to signal to people that would apply to our office, as well as people that are involved in the solar industry, and in policymakers for what we see as an opportunity and a future direction for sort of waste management.

Tom Temin: Yeah, so this could be kind of a new niche industry in waste management, if it’s done properly. Fair to say?

Lenny Tinker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s already companies today looking at how they could get into this industry.

Tom Temin: And does DOE have any sense of the tonnage or square footage or ounces, I don’t know what the right measures are, for these materials that will be eventually need to be recycled in the future?

Lenny Tinker: Yeah, so we can make predictions on the actual amount that could be released. The current administration has an ambitious goal to have 100% carbon free electricity by 2035. And in that scenario, we actually end up ramping sort of quite a bit, we still think that the amount of waste that we generated by PV systems is actually relatively low, so less than about a tenth of a percent of total waste. So we can break into the actual tonnes here and there and how that fractions out but the point is, is that it’s a significant but not extraordinarily large amount of waste.

Tom Temin: OK, and are you one of those solar panels on the roof kind of guys yourself?

Lenny Tinker: Unfortunately, with my current house, it didn’t work out. But I am a member of a community solar program where I can pay into the system and then have electricity generated from my bill

Tom Temin: Or you could put up a steeple with a windmill on top.

Lenny Tinker: That would be a lot more challenging, and definitely not as scalable as a PV system, which can be made almost any arbitrary size.

Tom Temin: All right, Lenny Tinker is a photovoltaics program manager at the Energy Department. Thanks so much for joining me.

Lenny Tinker: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

The post Energy Department issues plan to safely and affordably replace old solar panels first appeared on Federal News Network.

The General Services Administration sees a shift in contract obligation and business volume data where sustainability is concerned. Agencies increasingly rely on as-a-service models for enterprise IT infrastructure, requiring less owned physical infrastructure hardware.

Laura Stanton, assistant commissioner for IT Category at GSA, said agencies are buying the capabilities they need through industry, and letting industry manage things on the back end. That shrinks the footprint of data centers, which consume about 2% electricity in the U.S., according to the Energy Department. She said sustainability is built into contracting language more regularly, which aligns with the Biden administration’s strategy to harness federal procurement power for the sake of environmental sustainability.

In GSA’s enterprise infrastructure solutions contract for network infrastructure, “We’ve added sustainability criteria into that contract, requirements for climate change and adoption, sustainability and green initiative, supporting environmental sustainability practices through the use of energy efficient, virtual and streamline technology that facilitates agile and expansive network communications,” she said on a panel as part of GSA’s Data Sustainability Summit this week.

There is also the complex commercial satellite communications solutions contract, which has climate change risk language, and mitigation has a contract deliverable to prepare and update, as needed, a corporate climate risk management plan. The plan would identify and addresses the mitigation of climate change risks to land-based equipment and services.

Sustainability requirements are also in the contract for government strategic solutions for desktops and laptops. Those now have a mandatory electronic product environmental assessment tool (EPEAT) that provides a standard configurations and minimum requirements for desktops, laptops, tablets and client devices, Stanton said.

“So we’re building it in to make sure that we have sustainable equipment that we’re making available to the federal government, so that this means that the agencies don’t have to add in those requirements when they’re putting their task orders together,” she said.

She referenced a report from technology research and consulting firm Gartner, which predicted that by 2025, more than 85% of organizations will use a cloud-first principle and that over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, compared to 30% in 2021.

Following that trend, the upcoming cloud-focused blanket purchase agreement, Ascend, which Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Sonny Hashmi shared on Wednesday, aims to reduce burdens for agencies and build in minimum thresholds for security, data ownership, and common terms and conditions. Stanton said GSA is also writing climate goals into that BPA.

“We’re in the early stages, through this BPA, of writing the environmental directives related to carbon-pollution-free energy for data centers, and will provide those cloud capabilities,” Stanton said. “So we’re looking at geothermal, hydroelectric, hydrokinetic, nuclear, solar, wind and the like, as [well as] looking at how do get to carbon-pollution-free energy in the data centers provided through this vehicle.”

Speaking at Thursday’s summit, Ben Levin, senior manager of Technology Assessment and Resource Development at the Green Electronics Council, said the full lifecycle of IT products needs to be considered when talking about “green” electronics. That includes the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, processing and assembly, product longevity, greenhouse gas emissions through each of those phases, and protect of the labor force in the supply chain.

As one of the most famous proponents of green electronics, the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program. An ENERGY STAR-certified server saves on average about 30% of the energy compared to a non-certified server, or about 650 kilowatt hours per year. Servers are measured for efficiency in the active state, according to Ryan Fogle, ENERGY STAR Data Center Product Development and Marketing manager.

“So how much work can you get done per watt of energy, which means that you, in essence, can complete more work with less hardware,” he said. “So if you can do more work with less energy, that means that there’s potentially less servers that you need to get that same amount of work done. Less servers tends to mean that there’s less support dollars needed for things like licensing and software fees, and between those fees, the actual cost of the servers, which tend not to be cheap.”

Multiple tools and guidance from EPA and GSA exist to help agencies procure more sustainable IT.

The Sustainable Facilities tool has a Procurement Professional section with template steps to ensure agencies are evaluating the total value when it comes to sustainability, plus with Federal Acquisition Regulation. The GSA Advantage catalogue lets users search for products by eco-friendliness, said Paul Morris, IT Hardware Category manager at FAS. In addition, ENERGY STAR has examples of procurement language on its website and its commercial and industrial offers designations to data centers, Fogle said.

The post Expect more shifts in IT procurement language to reflect sustainability goals first appeared on Federal News Network.

NETL has been working on carbon capture and sequestration for at least 30 years before President Joe Biden’s executive orders on sustainability last year. One prime opportunity to cut energy consumption is at data centers, the demand for which is only expected to grow as government further embraces cloud computing and modernizes legacy IT. Currently they account for approximately 2% of total U.S. energy use, equivalent to 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building, according to DOE.

“Data centers are some of the most energy-intensive type buildings and a lot of that comes to electricity. So if we focus on decarbonizing [the] electricity sector, we have huge components of our economy that we miss,” Anderson said during the General Services Administration’s Data Center Sustainability Summit this week.

The country needs more integrated energy systems to get off fossil fuels, Anderson said. Four years ago his lab, along with the Idaho National Laboratory, which specializes in nuclear energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado formed a consortium to build on hybrid energy systems.

The placement of federal data centers could also be a way to transform communities left behind by a waning fossil-fuel-based economy. Anderson used the Mineral Gap Data Center in Wise County, Virginia, as an example. The center reclaimed some former coal mine sites and is powered by solar energy, sparking local economic investment and investment in renewables.

Wise isn’t alone – several Virginia counties are trying to attract data centers in traditionally coal-dependent regions with strong solar and geothermal resources for electricity.

“And certainly, our colleagues at the Department of Interior are in the process of deploying billions of dollars — $11 billion in the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program under the infrastructure bill — and billions of dollars in plugging orphan oil and gas wells around the country,” Anderson said. “These are truly opportunities to take an environmental legacy and turn it into economic opportunity.”

With about $62 billion of newly authorized funding for DOE in the infrastructure bill, NETL has a serious opportunity to leverage those reclamation projects for data centers. DOE is also releasing $19.5 million in awards for extracting sustainable critical minerals from coal waste, according to the initial report of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization.

Meanwhile, Anderson said the tri-labs also teamed up with the Pacific Northwest National lab to create a “net-zero laboratory initiative,” to reduce their scopes 1-3 emissions to zero over the next decade. This refers to emissions that directly and indirectly result from government activity.

“We will be working not only on site with decarbonizing our onsite usage, but with our power supply partners on driving forward the technologies that we have been developing in house and the Department of Energy with our partners,” he said. “And this is the call for partnership: I have the perfect audience here, we’ve been working with GSA on our power purchase agreements and many of our other sister federal agencies. There’s power in us putting all of our efforts together, there’s power — with the checks that we write through our power purchase agreements. And if we put our heads together, we can start driving the economy and creating the market that we need to see.”

The post Data centers pose prime opportunity to cut federal electricity consumption first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Defense Department and the General Services Administration released a request for information Thursday, asking energy suppliers how they expect to deliver on the administration’s goal of the federal government running 100% on carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is pressuring the Postal Service, an agency with one of the largest vehicle fleets in government, to make electric vehicles a greater part of its multibillion-dollar next-generation vehicle fleet contract.

These and other actions from the Biden administration underscore a full-court press to make its goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050 a reality.

However, agencies supportive of the administration’s agenda recognize there are significant challenges in meeting all of the green-governments goals in President Biden’s executive order signed in December.

DoD and GSA, under the RFI, are asking vendors for feedback on the feasibility of meeting the executive order’s targets, as well as identifying potential barriers or performance risks in reaching this goal.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said moving agencies completely to carbon pollution-free electricity will create more clean-energy jobs, and “put the country on the path toward a more resilient and sustainable future.”

“As a leader in procuring electricity for government, GSA is committed to working with DoD and other partner agencies to move us all toward sourcing 100% carbon pollution-free electricity,” Carnahan said.

The RFI states that the administration is interested in signing contracts lasting up to 10 years, with the goal of phasing carbon pollution-free electricity into its FY 2022 competitive retail procurements, and with contract deliveries that would begin in 2023.

The federal government, according to the RFI, may combine the green electricity procurement of several agencies,  “to achieve economies of scale, where appropriate.”

The RFI also asks current suppliers of energy to the federal government to outline how they plan to transition to carbon pollution-free electricity.

GSA and DoD will accept responses to the RFI through March 7.

Preferred energy sources outlined in the RFI include marine energy, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear and hydrokinetic.

“There is a preference for [carbon pollution-free electricity] supply to be from new or previously underutilized generation sources,” the RFI states.

GSA and DoD, as part of the RFI, are also requesting Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) or other accounting mechanisms from vendors to guarantee the electricity supplied is coming from a sustainable source.

The RFI states the federal government will also accept energy from fossil fuels, so long as “there is active capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions that meet EPA requirements.”

The agencies expect the executive order to result in U.S. energy companies supplying 10 gigawatts of new clean energy by 2030.

The federal government, between GSA and the Defense Logistics Agency, purchase more than 9 terawatt-hours of electricity every year.

DoD sees opportunities and limits to mitigating climate change

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the RFI shows the energy sector that DoD is “well underway” with efforts to meet the executive order’s goals.

DoD is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government, its largest emitter of greenhouse gases and one of the biggest buyers of electricity in the world.

“It’s not just critical to addressing the threat of climate change, but also to our national security as we work to secure U.S. competitiveness in rapidly-shifting global energy markets,” Hicks said.

Richard Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for energy & environment resilience, said  DoD views climate change as a threat to  readiness, and sees a need to reduce its greenhouse gases footprint to reduce the impact on its operations,

Kidd said DoD alone has a greenhouse gas footprint on par with Portugal, and is about the 55^th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

“The federal government and the country do not get where it needs to be without contributions from the department,” Kidd said Wednesday during a meeting of the Defense Business Board.

DoD is working to not just mitigate the severity of climate change’s impact on its future readiness, but also to reduce the harm it’s already having on agency operations.

A longer and more intense season of wildfires means National Guard brigades are spending more time fighting wildfires and less time on combat training, Kidd said. He also said climate change is also expected to speed up the degradation of DoD’s aircraft, vehicles and installations.

Meanwhile, near-peer competitors like China are currently investing in plans to transition to clean-energy energy, but Kidd warns the United States isn’t “keeping pace.”

“This is not an either-or proposition, the department either prepares to fight or the department takes steps to adapt to climate change. If we do not adapt to climate change, it will adversely affect our readiness and our mission effectiveness,” Kidd said.

DoD issued a request for information this summer, asking its major suppliers about their targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the environmental impact of their supply chains.

Kidd said, at least anecdotally, companies who supply to DoD, but also do business internationally, particularly in Europe, “have a more robust and clearer understanding of their greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the Biden administration has linked its clean-energy goals up with its “Buy American” goals, Kidd said U.S. vendors are comparatively less familiar with the emissions embedded in their supply chains.

“Companies whose only business is in America, or primary business is America, and their primary customer is the Department of Defense, have a much less robust posture on climate change [and] greenhouse gas emissions,” Kidd said.

While DoD is taking steps where it can, Kidd said there are limits to where the agency can realistically reduce its carbon footprint.

“Realistically, the department is always going to have greenhouse gas emissions,” Kidd said, adding that DoD will most likely have to look at carbon capture and sequestration technologies at some point to minimize its impact.

More than two-thirds of DoD’s greenhouse gas emissions come from its operational force.

“It’s really a lot harder to think of a zero-emission F-35 counterpart, or zero-emission Marine taskforce or a zero-emission armored brigade combat team, so there’s a lot of challenges there,” Kidd said.

White House presses USPS on ‘critical opportunity to buy electric vehicles

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is warning it may hold up the Postal Service’s plans to acquire its next-generation fleet, over concerns that the agency is not making electric vehicles a top priority.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, in separate letters to USPS, criticized the agency’s plans for most of its next-generation delivery vehicles to run on fossil fuels.

Both agencies also told USPS that the current environmental analysis of its contract award to Oshkosh Defense doesn’t give a complete picture of the environmental impact, and urged USPS to conduct a more thorough analysis.

EPA Associate Administrator Vicki Arroyo told USPS that its current plan to make electric vehicles 10% of its new fleet, at minimum, is “plainly inconsistent” with the administration’s goals.

“The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world,” Arroyo wrote.

The Postal Service’s vehicle fleet is second only to DoD, and accounts for nearly half of federal civilian vehicles.

CEQ Chairwoman Brenda Mallory, in her letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, said the agency’s contract marks a “critical opportunity” for electric vehicles to make up 70% of its total fleet.

“This available pathway would put USPS in a position to achieve dramatically positive effects for public health, climate crisis, and American competitiveness,” Mallory wrote.

Mallory said the White House is urging USPS to update its environmental review of its next-generation delivery vehicle contract, arguing that the current version does not give a full accounting of the expected environmental impact.

CEQ urged USPS to improve its next-generation vehicle fleet and make a decision that “that is grounded on sound legal footing.”

“If it does not do so, Congress or the federal courts may compel USPS to alter course,” Mallory said.

Arroyo said new USPS vehicles that run on gasoline would not “make meaningful progress” in reducing USPS greenhouse gases, and would only achieve 8.6 miles per gallon of gas. That’s only a slight improvement from the 8.2 miles per gallon average of its current fleet.

The EPA is also calling on USPS to accept public comments and hold public hearings about its next-generation vehicle contract.

Mallory said the administration “strongly backs” the $6 billion USPS would receive under the Build Back Better Act, which it would use to purchase more electric vehicles and charging stations.

That legislation, however, doesn’t have the support it needs in the Senate, and is unlikely to pass in its current form.

Mallory said the White House also supports USPS using its existing resources, “including its significant cash reserves,” to invest in more electric vehicles

USPS ended 2021 with more than $23 billion in cash.

“Through these approaches and others, we are confident that USPS has the tools it needs to act now,” Mallory wrote.

The Washington Post first reported on the CEQ and EPA’s letters to USPS on Wednesday.

The post Biden administration doubles down on greener energy for agencies, USPS electric vehicles first appeared on Federal News Network.

Most American adults are worried about global warming but less than half believe it will affect them personally, 2020 opinion data shows. Support for investing in renewable energy and limiting carbon dioxide emissions is rising, as is the belief that the president should do more to address global warming.

On both of these counts, the Biden administration is moving ahead with the directives of the  “Climate-Related Financial Risk” executive order, released in May, in which the president called for a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 to help limit global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The new Federal Sustainability Plan released in December charges agencies to harness procurement authority to reach 100% carbon pollution-free energy at federal facilities by 2030. It also calls for an entirely zero-emission vehicle fleet by 2035, and a net-zero emissions building portfolio by 2045. It also sets interim goals in the years leading up to those deadlines.

The Plan was released in conjunction with President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability.” With this strategy, the Council on Environmental Quality in the Office of Management and Budget aims to scale up sustainability efforts and meet agencies where they are, according to Federal Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Mayock.

“In places like zero emission vehicles, where the federal government has traditionally purchased under 1% of vehicles as zero-emission vehicles, we’re seeking to scale that up dramatically. And we’re seeking to also, of course, provide the infrastructure of charging that goes along with that,” he said Wednesday. “And so there’s places across those circles in the plan’s design, where we’re moving out today, so that we get to those periods of 2030, 2027, it’s a climb up a measured slope, versus a moment in time that we need to get to over one year.”

Mayock was speaking during the first in a series of virtual talks with sustainability and climate change experts, aimed at the federal community. Wednesday’s guest was Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy and the Political Science endowed chair in Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University.

Mayock said the Council on Environmental Quality asked agencies how far they could get on their own and how quickly. For some, 2027 was too long a deadline to transition their fleets, for example, and offered to plan for a 2024 or 2025 goal.

Hayhoe said she appreciated this tactic and asked Mayock, on behalf of the audience, both how federal employees could hold leadership accountable for executing climate change actions, and how employees can be more directly involved with the sustainability goals of the current administration.

He recommended finding out who the agency’s chief sustainability officer is — “It’s sometimes, and oftentimes, somebody who’s wearing a few hats” — and that over the past year he has seen a new enthusiasm for sustainability efforts. He added that having a player as big as the federal government set major procurement goals for zero-emissions technology and facilities will create an investment and incentive for those industries.

“When you have numerous corporate and public sector entities moving rapidly on the carbon-free electricity front, we’re creating a movement not only within the federal government. The federal government’s providing this huge signal to create that which will be very hard to reverse,” he said.

The Plan is divided into operating and enabling goals, the former including efforts such as net-zero emissions vehicle acquisitions by 2035 and a full net-zero emissions procurement by 2050. In this case, net zero is defined as reducing greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, and balancing remaining emissions with an equivalent amount of emission removal, through natural carbon sinks, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, or other methods.

Enabling goals are vaguer, and include steps such as identifying human capital requirements for effective implementation of the Plan, and incorporate sustainability and climate action into existing federal trainings. These goals are driven less by yearly deadlines and more so by systemic change. Mayock asked Katherine how society could move in this direction and away from a mindset of personal responsibility when it comes to tackling climate change. She paraphrased environmentalist Bill McKibben to say, “the most important thing an individual can do is not be such an individual,” and recognize that systems are made up of individuals each capable of demanding such change.

Hayhoe said opinion surveys conducted by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication indicate the lack of general concern for climate change in the U.S. is not an issue — 63% of American adults are worried about global warming. However, only 43% believe the consequences will affect them personally. This disconnect between urgency and efficacy can mean the difference between taking action at all and becoming complacent. The data also shows support for investing in renewable energy setting limits on CO2 pollutants, and for initiatives undertaken by corporations, state and local governments. It starts by openly talking about the problem and meeting people where they are, Hayhoe said.

“I was asked when I was in Iowa a little while ago, they said, ‘How do you talk about polar bears in Iowa?’ And I said, you don’t; you talk about corn. You don’t talk about what’s happening somewhere else, you talk about what’s happening where you live,” she said. “In Texas, I talked about cotton … In California, I talk about wildfires. Anywhere in the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast or the Midwest, you talk about floods. Big cities, we talk about our health and air pollution and extreme heat.”

The post New Federal Sustainability Plan harnesses fewer fossil fuels, more procurement power to fight climate change first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Biden administration is setting a decades-long vision to eliminate carbon emissions from federal buildings and vehicles.

President Joe Biden, as part of an executive order he signed Wednesday, expects agencies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050, including a 65% reduction by 2030.

The Biden administration expects the federal government’s purchasing power, as directed under this executive order, will support private industry’s capacity to produce electric vehicles and batteries, as well as accelerate job growth in sustainable manufacturing and engineering.

“As the single largest landowner, energy consumer, and employer in the nation, the federal government can catalyze private sector investment and expand the economy and American industry by transforming how we build, buy, and manage electricity, vehicles, buildings, and other operations to be clean and sustainable,” the executive order states.

A separate memo from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Management and Budget and Climate Policy Office states the administration is working guidance that, once released, will give agencies 90 days to set targets that will put them on a path to achieving the most of the executive order’s long-term goals.

The executive order builds on the administration’s priorities in the Build Back Better Act, which the House passed in November, but has yet to move forward in the Senate.

The infrastructure spending package would currently give the Postal Service $6 billion to invest in electric delivery vehicles and charging stations, and would give the General Services Administration $3 billion to purchase electric vehicles through September 2026.

The legislation also gives GSA more than $3 billion to improve energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings.

The executive order sets the goal of the federal government purchasing 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2035, and purchasing only zero-emission “light duty” vehicles by 2027.

The administration is directing all agencies to develop a zero-emission fleet strategy that addresses right-sizing their inventory of vehicles, purchasing more electric and zero-emission vehicles and developing charging stations and other necessary infrastructure.

This latest executive order builds on several other White House policies. President Joe Biden, in his first month in office, signed an executive order directing agencies to move the entire federal vehicle fleet to electric and zero-emission vehicles.

Administration officials, however, acknowledge agencies have a long way to go before moving the needle on the administration’s goals.

White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, the former EPA administrator under the Obama administration, said this summer that less than 1% of the federal fleet are plug-in electric vehicles and that agencies bought only 200 electric vehicles last year.

The EO directs agencies to make the federal building portfolio zero-emission by 2045, and reach a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2032, compared to baseline levels from 2008.  It also directs agencies to make federal buildings more energy and water-efficient,  as well as more resilient against climate change.

The EO also creates a Buy Clean Task Force, led by OMB and CEQ to promote the use of lower-emission construction materials.

The executive order directs agencies to transition to 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030, and ensure at least half of it comes from locally supplied clean energy sources.

To meet this goal, the administration is telling agencies to lease or otherwise leverage real-estate assets – such as rooftops, parking lots, garages and excess land — in ways that would produce clean energy.

The administration is also directing chief sustainability officers to make progress on the executive order’s goals. Biden in February appointed Andrew Mayock,  former Office of Management deputy director for management during the Obama administration, to serve as federal chief sustainability officer.

According to the Office of the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer, at least 50 agencies have their own chief sustainability officers.

The EO directs GSA to track greenhouse gas emissions, emissions reduction targets and other sustainability-related actions from major federal suppliers, and will work with CEQ to reduce emissions from the federal supply chain.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said the executive order gives the federal government an opportunity to reduce emissions and support clean energy industries.

“Right now we have a massive opportunity to create millions of clean energy jobs, save taxpayer money through reduced energy costs, and build a more sustainable future for generations of Americans,” Carnahan said. “Today’s actions demonstrate how GSA and our federal partners will move forward with a bold vision that meets this moment in history by harnessing the power of American ingenuity and innovation.”

The executive order also presents opportunities to train the federal workforce. It gives the Office of Personnel Management 90 days to create a report that outlines ways to expand environmental sustainability and climate adaptation training for federal employees.

The administration is telling OPM to consult with GSA, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and federal employee unions in drafting the report.

GSA Deputy Administrator Katy Kale, speaking at the most recent National Climate Task Force meeting, said the agency will ensure its federal customers have the support they need to buy electricity, vehicles and services from sustainable sources.

“From day one, GSA has been excited about revitalizing governmentwide sustainability, and we are now positioned to help agencies reach these ambitious goals,” Kale said.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said the executive order builds on many of the clean-energy investments in the Build Back Better Act, and puts agencies on a path to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Today’s executive order leverages the federal government’s unique role as the nation’s largest employer and purchaser of goods and services to make real progress in the fight against climate change,” Maloney said. “As chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, I’ve fought to make key elements of the President’s climate plan a reality, from electrifying the federal fleet, to advancing green buildings and green procurement, to promoting environmental justice. The security of our country and future generations relies on a coordinated, whole-of-government response to the climate crisis.”

The post Biden sets zero-emission goals for federal buildings, vehicles in executive order first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Air traffic control towers have been central features of airports since the beginnings of aviation. Many of them have also become architectural landmarks. Now, the FAA is seeking new designs for control towers that are both functional and distinctive. Here with more, Project Engineer Zane Edwards and Contract Specialist ThuyLihn TranNguyen.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Great to have you both on.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Thank you.

Zane Edwards: Thank you, good morning.

Tom Temin: And tell us what the vision is you have here for this project, we’ll get into the contracting mechanism. But what are you trying to accomplish here? Because I thought, in your big cities, the towers are already, landmarks in many ways now.

Zane Edwards: That’s exactly right. So in a lot of our major airports, the ones that control sort of the flow of traffic through the [National Airspace System] – your Atlantas, your Chicagos, LAs – those airports have seen lots of investment, and they’re in really pretty good shape. We have over 500 control tower and radar facilities. And a bunch of these are in regional municipal airports, smaller airports, they haven’t seen the investment in recent history. A lot of them are over 40 to 50 years old. They haven’t reached their end of useful life, they’re getting close to it. And they really need some love, to be honest. So our vision is, with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passing, it’s gonna provide us with the big – we’re not exactly sure the amount of funding, but a much larger investment than we normally see through our appropriation process, and it’s going to allow us to hopefully replace around 100 of these sort of towers. So what we’re doing with this competition is we’re saying, hey, we’re going out to the industry, we’re really great in the FAA at replacing and designing single towers, one of the time we’ve done it in the in times, we’re great at it, that process is pretty well set. But we’re not geared to develop to do something at this scale, and this short of a timeframe. So we’re going out to industry saying, hey, we know you guys can help us. We really want to hear your innovative design ideas and construction ideas. Tell us how you do it and tell us how you could do it quickly?

Tom Temin: Well, one more question on that, because almost every airport is operated by a local or regional authority that is somehow connected to that state or local government. And it can get complicated if you’re talking about the big airports, but also the small ones. And so who is responsible for maintaining and the capital investment in those smaller airports? Is that a federal function or you have to work with those state and local authorities?

Zane Edwards: So it can be. So a lot of these facilities we do own and maintain, there are also a number of other that the airports own and will maintain. And there’s some of the airports only that they maintain. But there’s all sorts of different sort of agreements. And so we read at this point, we’re hoping to take the opportunity. And just from a portfolio perspective, say we have a chance to really improve the quality of the infrastructure.

Tom Temin: And Ms. TranNguyen, how are you going about this? That is to say, is it a challenge competition? Is it a contract? What do you have out there on the street right now?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Yeah, so what we’re currently doing, and we’re gonna release a full and open competition. So the company of any size is welcome to participate in the competition. We’re looking from that experience to no experience at all. If you’re great at designing, or you have just a knack for designing, and you could be a college student and you’re interested, feel free to participate. That’s what we’re looking for. Because there’s opportunities down the line in the different phases that we have that you can join with a more experienced firm, if you still happen to succeed and pass the [first step].

Tom Temin: And in general, what are the requirements you’re putting out there, I mean, it has to be a certain height, and it has to have windows all around. But beyond that, these are highly technical facilities. So what are some of the criteria that they have to meet in order to have a chance here?

Zane Edwards: For the first phase, what we’re really looking for is we’re looking for a conceptual design statement and conceptual execution statement. Both limited to five pages, high-level ideas, tell us how you would go about this problem, what you think the vision is to solve it, and how you would actually execute that vision to the end. So really, what we’ve been limited to, the first go-around, the phase one of this it’s = we want the towers to be 60-119 feet in height, adjustable in that sort of window. We want them to be rapidly constructible. We’re aiming for a 50-year lifespan. It does have to support a control cabinet. But at this point, we’re not providing any sort of specifics on control cabinets, we really are just trying to get the concepts and the idea is out there. We’re also very interested in sustainability, not just from an energy efficiency or water reduction sort of point of view. But can we do on site, renewable energy generation? What about lowering our carbon footprint with different construction materials, different construction types? So those are the things we’re sort of looking for in the upfront Phase One of the search.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with FAA Project Engineer Zane Edwards, and with Contract Specialist ThuyLihn TranNguyen, and you mentioned that there are phases to this program. So the first phase is a kind of downselect of the best designs and what do the awardees get to continue?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: So in this competition, we have three phases total. And for the first phase, as we discussed briefly, we’re requesting the offers to submit innovative design concept and execution approach that facilitates the rapid deployment of the new air traffic control tower. And in that phase, we’ll be selecting up to 15 successful offers, [then] proceed to phase two. And then in phase two in the request for the qualifications, the offers must submit a financial capability as well as past performance corporate experience of the proposed teaming arrangement. And in this phase, we will be selecting up to six successful offers to participate in phase three. And then lastly, in phase three, which is the request for offers, we are requesting offers to submit a 10% design as well as a conceptual construction deployment plan for multiple towers. And in this phase, we’re also asking for a cost proposal to advance the design to 50-80%. And or more offers may be selected for this phase, or there could be a potential that we may not select any offers at this phase.

Tom Temin: And the ultimate goal here is the same tower in all of the places that will be replaced, or is there some accommodation for regional variation? You might not want something that looks the same in New England, as in southwestern United States.

Zane Edwards: 100%. So we do recognize that we wanted to be adaptable, not just aesthetically, to make them look a little different, but also environmentally. We’re going to build these in northern Alaska, we’re going to build them in southern Florida. So you’re going to have different energy sort of uses, different insulating properties, different loadings – wind loading, seismic loading, high-snow loading, just depending where you are. We’ll have different foundation types. We recognize that so they need to be site adaptable.

Tom Temin: Got it. And here’s a detail question: Do control towers have, like bathrooms at the top level where the controllers are? Do they have to go down stairs and into a terminal or something?

Zane Edwards: That’s a legitimate question. I’m actually glad you brought that up. Because there is one nuance to control towers that I do want to sort of explain to people: So we spent a lot of money to build these buildings for the view, right? That’s the key. So we don’t want to put anything in the Cabinet that will obstruct the view – it’s a 360 sort of window to the sky to the airfield below. You control the movement areas and the planes approaching and departing. So there is a restroom one floor below. But what we do have is an exemption to the ABA, which is the American Barriers Act for accessibility to the cab and one floor below, right? So that we can’t bring the elevator overrun into the cab because it would block the view. So there’s no way to get people with accessibility needs into the cab. So the capital one floor below that there is an exemption for us.

Tom Temin: Interesting. Yeah, and with respect to the ability to sustain on-site energy, for example, generate energy, that’s a tough one too. Because you can’t put a windmill on top of a control tower, because then you’d have a big rotating shaft, where airplanes are flying. So that’s not an option. So maybe solar or that type of thing?

Zane Edwards: We have one net zero facility in Tucson, Arizona, which is photovoltaic. It’s got a pretty big PV farm. There are some idiosyncrasies with that – you got to make sure you’re not blinding the controllers with reflection. You gotta make sure not blinding the pilots with the reflection. But we do and even lots of airports themselves will – San Francisco is an example – heir parking garages are covered with PVs. Their terminal buildings are covered with PVs. So you can do that. We could also do geothermal types of things in different climates. So there are other ways to meet, maybe not necessarily net zero – there’s not there’d be very few facilities that we think we could achieve that on, but we can make them more sustainable. We can reduce energy consumption, and we can reduce – water reduction.

Tom Temin: And if you have on-site generation, by whatever means, then in some sense, then you’re more resilient because if the utility goes out, the tower doesn’t have to go out and therefore the airport, and the air traffic doesn’t have to go out.

Zane Edwards: Absolutely right. So resiliency is another thing we want people to consider. So one of the goals of the procurement is the – I always mess up the name of it, because they change it all the time – but it’s like the the high performance, sustainable federal building. And one of the tenants of that is resiliency. So we do want people to look at things like flooding, natural disaster, forest, fire, whatever, and take that into consideration in their design concept.

Tom Temin: And [ThuyLihn], give us a sense of the timelines here. So the final deliverable eventually will be a plan, financial and construction, correct, but not a tower itself?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: So the “final” final will be the design itself, 50%-80%. And then we’ll be looking at the cost proposal to have it produced all the way to the 50%-80%. So that is what we’re looking for in phase three. And then the remainder, the 20%, we’re going to work with on another procurement to complete out the 20% based on the location of where the tower is going to be.

Tom Temin: So each tower or each, say, regional set of towers could have competitive bids for the actual construction down the line.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Correct. Possibility, but right now we’re focusing on this design procurements. So we’re not sure the strategy on the future of what those will be at the moment.

Tom Temin: And just a final question there. Some of the big airports do have distinctive towers that have become local landmarks. I’m thinking of Boston Logan, which is two big sticks with kind of a bridge in between them. And even in Washington – Reagan National is kind of an interesting looking tower. You can’t tell whether it’s a water tower or a missile site or an air traffic control tower. Are you looking for some sense of, I don’t know, playfulness or architectural distinction in these as well as clearly the critical function they perform?

Zane Edwards: Oh, absolutely. But we also want the offers be cognizant of there’s a balance between the economic and the aesthetic, right. So the cool thing about towers is they’re tall. They’re typically the tallest structure in these locations, these smaller towns. They’re visible for miles, super recognizable. So we want to not to be eyesores, right? So we don’t need to, I guess East Germany sort of construction, we would like to make them look a little better.

Tom Temin: Yeah. No Brutalist architects need apply.

Zane Edwards: Right, exactly, that’s a better way to phrase it.

Tom Temin: Alright. Zane Edwards is a project engineer on the program Integration and Support Team at the FAA. Thanks so much for joining me.

Zane Edwards: I’d like to leave you with one thought is sort of my pep speech to the industry: So you know, we’re looking for a 50-year lifespan on these buildings – architects, engineers, academics, this is your chance to put your stamp on the aviation industry for decades. So please, if anybody has any interest, check out the solicitation on the landing page and provide your thoughts. We really want to hear him.

Tom Temin: All right, you want to bring those constellations in for a safe landing. And a ThuyLihn TranNguyen is a contract specialist with the FAA. Thank you as well.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Thank you. And then if you’re interested, please, please register for SAM. That is my number one thing that I remind everyone of you’re not registered, register. So that you can participate. The beauty of this contract is that you get to be innovative, be fun, and we’re looking for that. So participate as much as you can and start by just registering for SAM.gov

Tom Temin: Sam – no longer beta – .gov.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Correct, no longer beta.

The post FAA calling on architects to come up with new air traffic control tower designs first appeared on Federal News Network.