Posted by Janet B. Stroud — June 24, 2024 — At RealComm, a major gathering of real estate technology leaders in Tampa, the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced plans this week to invest $80 million from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest climate investment in U.S. history, into smart building technologies that will help reduce emissions, increase efficiency and reduce costs, and enhance comfort across an estimated 560 federal buildings.
The smart building technologies funding will help reduce emissions, increase efficiency and reduce costs, and enhance comfort across an estimated 560 federal buildings. Image courtesy of GSA
The investments, impacting 49 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC, will also help create jobs and accelerate progress toward achieving net-zero emissions in the federal building portfolio by 2045, and other goals of President Biden’s Federal Sustainability Plan.
GSA intends to enhance operations through granular controls, expand available reporting with more advanced metering sources, and optimize the operator experience through this IRA investment, including:
- Optimize federal building operations and energy use by installing approximately 1,000 new meters to measure electricity, water and gas performance. These meters allow GSA to monitor the operations of the building, identify inefficiencies and take immediate steps to resolve them.
- Improve comfort level and building occupant experience in more than 70 federal buildings by installing smart sensors. GSA will measure indoor air and environmental quality, carbon dioxide levels and other conditions to adjust building operations based on real-time data.
- Make it easier for GSA to manage operations with real-time data through a new unified user interface for more than 150 federal buildings. This will consolidate information currently residing in separate applications to improve the work environment through more direct access to data about equipment operation, energy usage and sustainability performance.
- Implement “best-in-class HVAC controls” (based on ASHRAE Guideline 36) for approximately 15 buildings. This investment will reduce energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions and utility costs while increasing comfort for building occupants.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $3.4 billion for GSA to build, modernize and maintain more sustainable and cost-efficient high-performance facilities. This funding includes $975 million specifically for emerging and sustainable technologies, and related sustainability and environmental programs, including this announcement. GSA’s Inflation Reduction Act projects will implement new technologies and accelerate GSA’s efforts in achieving a net-zero emissions federal building portfolio by 2045. Through these investments, GSA estimates that it could reduce carbon emissions by 2.3 million metric tons, the same amount that 500,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles produce each year.
This announcement is part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, focused on growing the American economy from the bottom up and the middle-out — from rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, to creating a manufacturing and innovation boom to building a clean-energy economy that will combat climate change and make our communities more resilient.
Learn more about Inflation Reduction Act programs and projects at GSA.
GSA provides centralized procurement and shared services for the federal government, managing a nationwide real estate portfolio of nearly 370 million rentable square feet, overseeing approximately $100 billion in products and services via federal contracts, and delivering technology services that serve millions of people across dozens of federal agencies.
