DOE Sends Energy Saving Teams to Six Facilities in Five States

December 14, 2005

Federal Energy Saving Teams visited six federal facilities in five states in early December. The teams were deployed to a Bureau of Prisons facility in Allenwood, Pennsylvania; a U.S. Coast Guard facility in Cape May, New Jersey; a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Charleston, South Carolina; a federal courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama; a U.S. Army arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama; and the Denver Federal Center in Colorado to identify low-cost and no-cost measures to save energy and money. The no-cost energy assessments are part of DOE's "Easy Ways to Save Energy" campaign, which in the coming months will send Energy Saving Teams to the 30 largest federal facilities and the top 200 energy-intensive manufacturing facilities in the United States. See the DOE press releases about the prison, Coast Guard facility, hospital, courthouse, arsenal, and the Denver Federal Center.

The Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex, located in Pennsylvania's northern Allegheny Mountains, consists of four facilities, ranging from a minimum-security camp to a high-security federal penitentiary. The Cape May Coast Guard Training Center in New Jersey is the basic training center for all Coast Guard recruits. The Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center in South Carolina provides acute medical, surgical and psychiatry inpatient care as well as primary care and specialized outpatient services. The Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Alabama is named for a federal judge who served in the courthouse and made many rulings that advanced the cause of civil rights in Alabama. Although the original building is on the National Register of Historic Places, a major new addition to the building was dedicated in 2002. See the Bureau of Prisons and National Park Service Web sites.

Two of the Energy Saving Teams face quite a challenge because of the scale of the sites. Redstone Arsenal in Alabama sits on 40,000 acres and has 11.7 million square feet of building space, including administrative buildings, laboratories, flight test ranges, and other specialized buildings and equipment. The arsenal employs about 19,000 federal government and contract workers. The Denver Federal Center covers less area but comprises 90 buildings with more than 4 million square feet of floor space, hosting 26 different federal agencies with 6,000 federal employees. But huge sites can yield huge energy savings: In 2002, an Energy Saving Performance Contract (ESPC) allowed agencies at the Federal Center to save more than $450,000 in annual energy costs. See the U.S. Army Web site and the ESPC Case Study (PDF 170 KB) from DOE's Federal Energy Management Program. Download Adobe Reader.