Federal Employees Receive DOE Awards for Saving Energy

October 28, 2004

The efforts of 27 individuals, teams, and organizations throughout the federal government yielded almost $39 million in energy savings in the past year. In honor of those achievements, DOE presented the 2004 Federal Energy and Water Management Awards on October 28th to employees of the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy; DOE and the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Interior; the Environmental Protection Agency; the General Services Administration; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the Social Security Administration. One naval facility also received an Energy Star Building Award for superior building performance. Presented each year since 1981, the awards are sponsored by DOE's Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP).

The 2004 winners purchased green power; drew on renewable energy sources such as landfill gas and solar, wind, and geothermal energy; installed fuel cells and combined heat and power technologies; implemented energy savings performance contracts and utility-financed contracts, which use private funds to cut federal energy costs; and employed energy efficient technologies and strategies such as daylighting, reflective roofing, high-performance windows, high-efficiency lighting, motion detectors, and efficient heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems. See the DOE press release.

The U.S. military led several noteworthy efforts this year, including the installation of geothermal heat pumps at an Army base in Korea; the use of sea water, a deep well, and off-peak thermal storage to meet cooling needs at a naval base in Hawaii; a strategy to avoid fuel dumping by fighter jets that saved more than 126,000 gallons of fuel; efforts aboard two naval ships that cut fuel costs by more than $1 million; and upgrades of air compressor systems at five military bases. See the complete list of the 2004 winners on the FEMP Web site.