by jbs051110 e5 — May 17, 2010—The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced on May 4 that it has awarded four new agreements valued at a total of $52.5 million under its Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC), designed to help the federal government save energy and water.
The new “task orders” will result in energy-saving upgrades at the Bureau of Land Management, National Wildlife Center, and two General Services Administration (GSA) facilities, according to news from DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
The four new awards are for improvements to federal facilities that include: installation of renewable energy systems; improvements to heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems; upgrades to lighting, boilers and chillers, and water and sewer systems; installation of building automation systems; and appliance energy-use reduction.
Under an ESPC, the contractor—an Energy Service Company (ESCO)—designs, constructs, and obtains the necessary financing for energy-savings projects, and the agency makes payments over time to the contractor from the money it saves on its utility bills, explains EERE. The contractor guarantees the energy improvements will generate savings that will cover all payments to the contractor. Once the improvements are paid for, the federal agency receives all of the long-term cost savings.
The ESPC contracts are administered by DOE and open to all federal agencies. DOE provides the financing and technical project expertise throughout the development of each project. ESPCs provide federal agencies with access to alternative financing at a scale that is needed to meet the challenge of boosting the use of renewable energy and reducing energy and water consumption, says EERE. The annual energy savings of the four projects under the new contracts will be at least 86,000 million BTU—the equivalent of about 14,500 barrels of oil.
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