General Services Administration
“On an annual basis, buildings consume over 40% of America’s energy and produce nearly 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions. As the largest single “landlord” in the United States, the Federal government oversees about 500,000 Federal buildings. More than $20 billion is spent annually on acquiring or substantially renovating Federal facilities, more than $3.5 billion for energy for these facilities, and almost $200 billion for personnel compensation and benefits for civilian employees. In the first year, the occupant costs three times more than the building, but extended over a typical forty year building life the occupant accounts for 95 percent of total costs.
Routine optimization of HVAC equipment will improve indoor air quality, worker productivity, and conservatively reduce energy expenses by ten percent. These savings can only be achieved through continuous monitoring. Someone must routinely go through mechanical rooms to ensure adequate outside air is bought into the building to flush pollutants out. They also check sensor calibration, damper and equipment operation and so on. This work could be contracted out but, we believe it could largely be accomplished using existing resources. It could be done by the quality assurance inspector and the O&M contractor as quality assurance inspections are performed.
Because employee costs account for most of the Governments expenses, anything that impacts productivity can have a huge impact. For example, the cost to the nation’s workforce of upper respiratory diseases in 1995 was $35 billion in lost work plus an additional $29 billion in health care costs. More healthful indoor environments could reduce these costs by 10%-30%.” Productivity improvements in the range of four percent can pay for all building rent and energy costs. In other words take good care of your people and the building is free.
It has been estimated that O&M programs targeting energy efficiency can save 5% to 20% on energy bills without a significant capital investment. Continuous commissioning can be achieved with minimal cash outlays. In 1998, a study conducted for the Department of Energy estimated that more than $40 million in potential energy savings could be gained from commissioning only 1% of existing buildings greater than 25,000 square feet.
Additionally, on April 5th 2005 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave a presentation at the 2005 Federal Energy Summit where they announced they were going to increase enforcement of the Executive Orders (EO) relating to energy use and environmental pollution. The EO’s which they referred to are: EO 13123, EO 13148, EO 13101, and EO 12902.
For more information contact Mr. Charlie Rienhardt at 303-236-8000 X 5325 or by email at charles.rienhardt@gsa.gov.
