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S. HRG. 112–829 

GSA: OPPORTUNITIES TO CUT COSTS, IMPROVE 

ENERGY PERFORMANCE, AND ELIMINATE WASTE 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND THE

COMMITTEE ON 

ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MARCH 30, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gpo.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

BARBARA BOXER, California, Chairman 

MAX BAUCUS, Montana 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

MIKE CRAPO, Idaho 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

BETTINA POIRIER, Majority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

RUTH VAN MARK, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island, Chairman 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

BARBARA BOXER, California, (ex officio) 

MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, (ex officio) 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

MARCH 30, 2011 

Boxer, Hon. Barbara, U.S. Senator from the State of California ........................ 1 

Inhofe, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma .................... 2 

Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode Island ......... 4 

Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator from the State of Maryland ................ 5 

Merkley, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from the State of Oregon ................................ 7 

WITNESSES 

Johnson, Martha, Administrator, U.S. General Services Administration .......... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10 

Sindelar, John, client industry executive, HP Enterprise Services ..................... 50 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 

Bautista, John, vice president, New Business Development, Arrowhead Systems, Inc ............................................................................................................... 56 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 58 

Gatlin, Doug, vice president, LEED, U.S. Green Building Council ..................... 65 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 67 

Responses to additional questions from: 

Senator Boxer ............................................................................................ 75 

Senator Inhofe ........................................................................................... 75 

Hubbell, Ward, president, Green Building Initiative ........................................... 76 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 78 

DeBoer, Jeffrey D., president and chief executive officer, The Real Estate 

Roundtable ............................................................................................................ 91 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 93 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

Letter from several organizations and companies to Hon. John Boehner and 

Hon. Nancy Pelosi, dated February 17, 2011 .................................................... 119 

Statements: 

Block, Nadine, senior director of Government Outreach, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Inc. ...................................................................................... 121 

Phillips, Cassie, vice president, Sustainable Forests & Products, 

Weyerhaeuser Company ............................................................................... 123 

National Association of Home Builders .......................................................... 125 

Glowinski, Robert, American Wood Council ................................................... 131 

American Forest Foundation ........................................................................... 133 

(1) 

GSA: OPPORTUNITIES TO CUT COSTS, IMPROVE ENERGY PERFORMANCE AND ELIMINATE WASTE 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2011 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS, 

JOINTLY WITH THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT, 

Washington, DC. 

The committees met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room 406, 

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Boxer, Inhofe, Whitehouse, Cardin, Merkley 

and Boozman. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER, U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Senator BOXER. Thank you very much for being here today for 

this important hearing on opportunities at the GSA to cut costs, 

improve energy performance and eliminate waste. 

I am going to make my opening statement and then I am going 

to turn the gavel over to our subcommittee Chair on this very important matter. Then if he has to leave to go to another committee 

hearing, he will hand the gavel back. So, we are going to be doing 

a little passing off of gavels. 

The Federal Government is one of the Nation’s largest energy 

consumers and purchases nearly $500 billion in goods and services 

every year. The Federal Government is positioned to be a leader in 

efforts to improve efficiency, eliminate waste, improve environmental performance and save money. So, this is an area where I 

think that Republicans and Democrats can meet because we all 

want to see efficiency in place. 

GSA provides office space to over 1 million Federal employees in 

over 9,600 Federal buildings and leases totaling 370 million square 

feet of space. The Agency is already playing a key role in improving 

the efficiency of office buildings nationwide which account for a significant amount of the Nation’s energy and water use and waste. 

According to the EPA and the U.S. Green Building Council, 

buildings in the U.S. account for 36 percent of total energy use, 36 

percent, and 65 percent of electricity consumption, 12 percent of 

total water consumption, 68 percent of total electricity consumption 

and 30 percent, I do not know, we said two electricities so that does 

not make sense. But let us just put it this way. We use a lot of 
2 

energy. We will correct this for the record to show exactly how 

much. 

Now, Senator Inhofe and I worked together a long time ago and 

we did write some legislation which said let us save money and we 

set up a situation where in many Federal buildings we said we 

want to have someone in charge of making sure that the energy 

use is kept at the lowest level possible. We, I think learned, as we 

wrote this legislation, I will never forget it because Senator Inhofe 

said, I am not going to support this unless you show me the payback. The payback was just a few years for the capital that we put 

up front. 

GSA is also the central Agency for acquiring products and services for the Federal Government. The Agency offers over 12 million 

products and services to other Federal agencies. GSA can have a 

large influence on the goods and services that are provided to the 

Federal Government by the private sector. 

Businesses worldwide are working to cut costs, reduce waste and 

improve efficiency and are creating competitive advantages in the 

process. I think the Federal Government can learn from these private sector efforts. Done right, these initiatives can cut waste and 

inefficiency while making the Federal Government’s supply chain 

cleaner and sustainable. 

Again, the legislation we enacted, the Energy Independence and 

Security Act, provided for construction of green Government buildings and retrofit Federal buildings with energy efficient technologies. Both Presidents Bush and Obama also issued Executive 

orders to improve the sustainability of the Federal Government. 

These are important initiatives and today we will hear from GSA 

about how those initiatives are being implemented. 

On the second panel we will hear from companies who are working to improve their own operations about the benefits they have 

seen by becoming more efficient. We will also hear from building 

and energy efficiency experts from outside of Government regarding the progress that has been made in building efficiency to date, 

the barriers to further improvements, and what more can be done. 

I personally believe we must continue to aggressively improve 

the efficiency and sustainability of the Federal Government and I 

look forward to working with GSA and my colleagues to determine 

if adequate authorities exist to enable the Federal Government to 

continue cutting waste, reduce energy use, improve environmental 

performance and remove any barriers there may be to these ongoing efforts. 

I appreciate all of the witnesses who are here today. I am hoping 

to stay for all of you and, before I hand the gavel over to my colleague to run this meeting, I am going to call on Senator Inhofe 

for his opening remarks. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I am pleased to 

have the opportunity to discuss the ways that we might be able to 

improve our efficiency and eliminate waste. We have talked about 

this for a long time. 
3 

Given the current state of the economy, people in businesses 

around the country continue to tighten their belts and look for 

ways to save money. We need to be doing the same thing. 

I look forward to hearing from Administrator Johnson on GSA’s 

efforts to improve property purchases and maintain efficient buildings. For me, this is an area where we can cut costs and save taxpayers money. Additionally, it would be helpful to understand the 

financial impacts of EPA regulations and other Federal mandates 

on the Administration. 

I am extremely concerned about how GSA will cope with the 

added costs and burdens from the expansion of the EPA lead based 

paint removal to commercial buildings. We fought this battle for a 

long time and I thought the battle was over and I thought we had 

won. Now they are talking about expanding this, the lead based 

rules, to commercial buildings. 

We know the problems. We know that out there you have to have 

inspectors, they have to certify and all of these things, and we were 

not able to get this done. But we did come to a happy conclusion 

on that. I just want to, I know this is not really the GSA, this is 

the EPA, but you are having to deal with it so we want to weigh 

in on it. 

I also continue to be concerned with GSA’s exclusive use of the 

LEED standard in certifying green buildings. This has created unintended consequences such as the use of foreign lumber instead of 

American grown lumber. Obviously this is costly, inefficient and 

environmentally unsound. 

I believe that the increased interest in green buildings and advances in technology in recent years have and are creating new 

building ratings systems. These systems should be allowed to compete in the market and Government agencies should be able to determine which systems meet their performance requirements. 

We also need to practice careful oversight to ensure that the best 

rating systems are being used in Government decisions. I am 

pleased to have Mr. Ward Hubbell, president of the Green Building 

Initiative with us today to discuss some of the issues with the lead 

and explain other certification programs used by the CBI. 

I am also happy to have Mr. Jeffrey DeBoer, president and CEO 

of The Real Estate Roundtable, here today. He will speak to the 

state of commercial real estate industry wide. I think he may even 

have some comments to make on the thing that concerns me right 

now having to do with the lead paint rule. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Inhofe follows:] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Thank you, Madam Chairman, for holding this hearing. I am pleased to have the 

opportunity to discuss ways in which we can improve efficiency and eliminate waste 

within GSA. 

Given the current state of the economy, people and businesses around the country 

continue to tighten their belts and look for ways to save money. The Federal Government should be doing the same. I look forward to hearing from Administrator 

Johnson on GSA’s efforts to improve property purchases and maintain efficient 

buildings. 

For me, this is an area where we can cut costs and save taxpayer money. Additionally, it would be helpful to understand the financial impacts of EPA regulations 
4 

and other Federal mandates on the Administration. I am extremely concerned about 

how GSA will cope with the added costs and burdens from an expansion of the EPA 

lead-based paint rule to commercial buildings. Potential purchasers of GSA property 

may be wary of having to comply with costly regulations. 

I also continue to be concerned with GSA’s exclusive use of the LEED standard 

in certifying ‘‘green’’ buildings. This has created unintended consequences, such as 

the use of foreign lumber instead of American-grown lumber. Obviously, this is costly, inefficient, and environmentally unsound. 

I believe that the increased interest in green buildings and advances in technology 

in recent years have, and are, creating new building rating systems. These systems 

should be allowed to compete in the market and government agencies should be able 

to determine which system meets their performance requirements. 

We also need to practice careful oversight to ensure that the best rating systems 

are being used in government decisions. 

I am pleased to have Mr. Ward Hubbell, President of the Green Building Initiative, with us today to discuss some of the issues with LEED and explain another 

certification program used by GBI. 

I am also happy to have Mr. Jeffrey DeBoer, President and CEO of the Real Estate Round Table here today. He will speak to the state of commercial real estate 

industry nationwide. This is particularly important as GSA looks at disposing of excess and underutilized properties. 

Thank you again Madam Chairman for this opportunity, I look forward to hearing 

from all the witnesses. 

STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND 

Senator WHITEHOUSE [presiding]. Let me first thank Chairman 

Boxer for agreeing to hold this joint hearing of the full EPW Committee and my Oversight Subcommittee. Thank you, Administrator 

Johnson and all of the witness, for being here. 

As the Administrator of GSA, I believe you are the largest single 

consumer of energy in the United States, accounting for 1.5 percent 

of the Nation’s annual energy consumption. That probably actually 

makes you the world’s largest consumer of energy, not just the 

United States’ largest consumer of energy. 

The Federal Government spends about $24 billion every year on 

electricity and fuel and in the current budget climate, anything we 

can do to help find opportunities for greater efficiency and cost savings for the American taxpayer is worth doing. 

We also, as the U.S. Government, have access to capital in order 

to make the investments to achieve that payoff, unlike many homeowners in Rhode Island and places like that who could save a lot 

of money this way but have difficulty getting the capital investment together to make the investment in their homes and businesses. 

President George W. Bush and President Obama each issued Executive orders calling for the Federal Government to use its purchasing power to achieve improved energy and environmental performance, and the President has set emissions reductions goals for 

the Federal Government that, if they were met, would save an estimated $8 to $11 billion in energy costs over the next decade, surely 

a worthy target. Your General Services Administration has been a 

central player in this drive and through your purchasing of a vast 

number of products each year, including vehicles and office supplies and, of course, the buildings that you run. 

On the building side, you own nearly 2 percent of all commercial 

real estate in the United States. Reducing our energy and water 
5 

footprint at these buildings can save operation and maintenance 

costs while also limiting the Government’s environmental impact. 

You have shown admirable leadership in implementing a suite of 

initiatives in the purchasing and building areas which have helped 

drive the market toward more efficient products and encouraged 

the deployment of new American technologies that need a foothold 

in the market in order to demonstrate success and move on to 

greater success. This, in turn, benefits all of us and our economy 

as these products become more widely available. 

So, I commend you for your leadership in these areas and I look 

forward to hearing from you on GSA’s next steps in achieving the 

goals of these initiatives. 

I also look forward to hearing from our second panel today, what 

the Government can learn from the private sector. Many businesses have already realized significant cost savings and improved 

performance of their own buildings and products and I am interested in how partnerships between industry and Government can 

help generate mutual advantage and cost savings as well as new 

markets for efficient products and new jobs. 

So, again, Chairman Boxer, thank you very much for holding this 

hearing. I look forward to working with all of the members of the 

committee to protect our taxpayers and the environment through 

improved efficiency and performance. 

I would recognize the distinguished Senator from Maryland, Senator Cardin. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, U.S. SENATOR 

FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND 

Senator CARDIN. Well, Chairman Whitehouse, Chairman Boxer 

and Senator Inhofe, thank you very much for convening this hearing. 

Administrator Johnson, it is a pleasure to have you before our 

committee. We all understand that this Nation is facing an energy 

and environmental and fiscal challenge. The way that we administrate our buildings can very well help us in each one of those categories. 

My colleagues have already mentioned the Executive orders that 

have been issued by this Administration and previous Administrations that deal with these issues. The Congress passed the Energy 

Independence and Security Act of 2007 that established important 

performance standards to reduce energy consumption and lessen 

the environmental impact of Federal facilities. 

I must tell you the trend toward green buildings is not motivated 

by just the environment or doing something that you feel good 

about. There is a fiscal reason why we do it. It makes good sense 

from a business point of view. 

The U.S. Green Building Council, the independent private trade 

organization responsible for developing the Leadership in Energy 

and Environmental Design or LEED certification program has 

issued a detailed report on this and their report shows us that by 

doing LEED certification, we actually save money during the life 

cycle of the building, saving money in public buildings for the taxpayers of this country. 
6 

Due to Maryland’s proximity to Washington, DC, Maryland has 

a large number of both federally-owned and federally-leased properties throughout the State. In addition to these Federal Agencies, 

Maryland is home to 16 Department of Defense installations, dozens of national parks and historical sites, and many fantastic national wildlife refuges located along the waters and tributaries of 

the Chesapeake Bay. 

Ensuring that the Federal Government with its multimillion acre 

footprint is taking adequate measures to protect natural resources 

like the Chesapeake Bay, to conserve energy resources, is important in the long-term economic and environmental health of the 

country. I believe the Federal Government has a responsibility of 

leading by example when it comes to reducing energy costs and 

consumption and minimizing the impact the Federal facilities have 

on the environment. 

The Government should not be exempt from paying its fair share 

for mitigating or controlling its impacts on the natural environment. I am proud that I have authored two separate bills granting 

these responsibilities to the Federal Government. 

First is to design standard requirements that all new Federal 

buildings must meet to protect the predevelopment hydrology of 

project sites. Stormwater runoff is the largest source of water pollution in this Nation. This provision, as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act, is designed to limit the impact Federal facilities have on water quality. 

The second bill, which became law in the last Congress, ensures 

that the Federal Government pays it fair share of the costs of municipal stormwater infrastructure fees where the Federal Government has a structural presence. 

I want to thank the Administration for help in the passage of 

both of these laws. I think they are important statements that the 

Federal Government in fact will comply, as any landowner, with 

their responsibility for our environment. 

Local governments and residents should not have to pick up the 

tab for the Federal Government when it comes to paying for water 

infrastructure maintenance. The GSA’s responsibility for complying 

with these laws, it is their responsibility, and I look forward to 

hearing the progress from you, Administrator Johnson, in the compliance with both of these laws. 

The Federal inventory of buildings in Maryland runs the gamut 

in terms of sophistication and sound environmental design. The 

new FDA facility in White Oak will be the state-of-the-art green 

buildings that save money on electricity and water usage. This is 

very much to the benefit of the Federal taxpayers. 

Yet, at the other end of the spectrum there is a Baltimore Federal Courthouse. Simply put, the Baltimore Federal Courthouse is 

an embarrassment in design and construction. Baltimore Courthouse remains the most poorly-constructed U.S. courthouse in the 

country. The building has by no means been a money saver for the 

taxpayers. An inefficient 35 year HBAC system, inefficient windows, wasteful, leaking and frequently failing plumbing infrastructure has cost Federal taxpayers millions of dollars over the years. 

The wise investment from a life cycle cost perspective would be 

either to start over with a newly-designed green building or to give 
7 

the current structure a massive renovation overhaul because it 

does not make sense to pump more taxpayer life support money 

into this perpetually-failing Federal building. 

I really want to acknowledge and thank Bob Peck, the Commissioner of Public Building Services. He has taken a personal interest. He has visited the facility, he has worked with us, and I just 

really want to applaud that type of effort. 

I know these are difficult fiscal times and we need to make the 

right investments to save taxpayer money. Here is one area where 

I hope we can move forward. 

I look forward to working with GSA. The Administration has indicated that Federal facilities play a huge part in the development 

of our cities like Baltimore and I think that we can do a more efficient job for the taxpayers of this country working together to advance our environment, advance our energy policies, and advance 

our fiscal needs. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Senator Cardin. 

Administrator Johnson, before I turn to Senator Merkley, you are 

not here before this committee all the time. But as a member of 

the committee I want to let you know that this is not the first time 

that Senator Cardin has raised these concerns about his courthouse, to put it mildly, and I am certain it is not going to be the 

last time. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So, I urge you to give them considerable 

weight. 

Senator Merkley. 

STAEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE 

STATE OF OREGON 

Senator MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. 

Administrator Johnson, it is great to have you here, and in the 

midst of a national dialog about fiscal responsibility, and certainly 

an important opportunity to save money and improve the environment is to reduce the amount of energy we consume in our Government operations. 

Certainly the technologies exist and the Federal Government is 

in a position to take the lead, take the lead in the use of smart materials including greater use of wood in a variety of capacities and 

to make certain building practices more commonplace. 

I think the Federal Government has been taking a lot of steps 

in the right direction. But we can go further and faster. I particularly want to encourage the Administration to pursue every possible effort to electrify its fleet of vehicles. 

There is more and more presence in the private markets, firms 

recognizing that in delivery van type operations where you have 

common stops with significant loads, regenerative braking saves 

enormous amounts of power or recaptures the power, and that in 

the lifetime costs are becoming very competitive or better than gasoline fueled vehicles. 

Certainly in the context of world events today, as we look at the 

unrest around the world in Libya and Egypt and so forth, it should 
8 

put an exclamation point on the national security costs of depending on the Middle East for oil. 

So, much can be done. Thank you for being here to help lay out 

a vision for where we are headed. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Let me, Administrator Johnson, add to 

Senator Merkley’s point that an active role by GSA in that would 

also help build out the electronic infrastructure for electronic vehicles for recharging and so forth. There is a little bit of a chicken 

or the egg problem as we move more into that, where you find recharging and so forth. So, I would strongly encourage you to do 

that. 

If you could please go ahead and give your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF MARTHA JOHNSON, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. 

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Good morning Chairman Boxer, Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking 

Member Inhofe, Senator Johanns, members of the committee and 

my Senator from Maryland. I appreciate being here today to discuss GSA’s role in encouraging a high-performing and sustainable 

Government that reduces waste, increases efficiency and lowers 

costs while fostering innovative new sectors of the economy that 

will help create jobs. 

I am here today not just as the head of an agency, but as a businesswoman, which is not just a job, but an identity, an identity 

which compels my commitment to making the most reasonable and 

cost-effective decisions possible on behalf of taxpayers. 

GSA is an agency which has a broad portfolio. We manage 370 million square feet of space and help facilitate over $62 billion in 

acquisitions through our contracting vehicles. We touch many markets and wide portions of the supply chain. 

At this moment, we have to do more with less. We have to use 

our resources efficiently and effectively, shrink our waste and be 

agile and responsive to new opportunities to do just that. We have 

to be the best of what is promised by sustainability. 

To the private sector, sustainability is about productivity, efficiency, innovation and the bottom line. It is about rooting out 

waste and finding greater efficiencies. This requires innovation. 

Whether it is providing cutting edge IT solutions like cloud computing or installing geothermal heating technology in our buildings, we are pursuing emerging and ever-improving services and 

technologies that will give us the best value for each taxpayer dollar expended. 

By providing cloud solutions and consolidating data centers, we 

can cut into the billions spent annually on data center infrastructure. By installing the latest technologies in our buildings, we can 

reduce energy usage and save on operating costs. By moving toward fuel efficient and hybrid vehicles, we can work to reduce the 

Federal fleet’s fuel consumption and encourage domestic industries. 

By embracing initiatives like telework and alternative workplace 

strategies, we can reduce our footprint and our need for real estate 

while increasing productivity. 

We are pursuing these initiatives in partnership with industry. 

We need to understand the latest trends in the market, encourage 
9 

innovation and support good ideas. We must be flexible and nimble 

to incorporate new technologies. 

That is why we have reached out to industry through our Green 

Proving Ground Program, to figure out the latest innovative technologies and solutions and work to incorporate them into our buildings, measuring and reporting the results. That is why we have established a green-gov supply chain partnership to hear from companies that are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, to learn 

how best to use sustainability considerations in our Federal procurements. That is why the pending removal of the statutory price 

limitation. We intend to initiate a pilot program to lease 100 plugin electric vehicles and test them in five major cities across the 

United States. 

By pursuing and making available the latest the market has to 

offer, as well as utilizing cost-effective technologies and solutions, 

we can make significant progress in improving energy performance 

and cutting costs. 

The initiatives outlined above are just a handful of those that we 

pursuing to encourage a sustainable Government. It increases our 

efficiency and fosters emerging sectors of our economy. 

The President has made operational excellence in Government a 

key goal, and GSA is proud to be part, the central part, of this effort. 

I welcome the opportunity to be here today and I am happy to 

answer any questions you have. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 
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Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Administrator Johnson. 

You are presently at work in the Pastore Federal Building in 

Providence, RI, named after my illustrious predecessor, John O. 

Pastore, doing energy refits there in the air conditioning system, 

with additional insulation and advanced metering that are estimated to save $15,000 to $35,000 per year once they are completed. 

We are also very pleased that a Rhode Island contractor is doing 

that work and creating jobs. 

But I am interested in how that fits into the larger picture of 

how you identify buildings for that kind of work. Do you conduct 

energy audits of all buildings to identify energy savings projects 

such as these, and what criteria does GSA use for selecting building retrofits? What is that process? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you for that, and thank you for the comments about the building. Some of these projects are terribly exciting. It is good to see them. 

We have a regional structure that has people across the United 

States, experts in both sustainability, energy design and, of course, 

building maintenance. One of the things that is important for us 

is that real estate is a local business. It is what is going on in that 

community and in that environment, in that weather, in that altitude. So, we need to take a number of factors into consideration as 

we consider which buildings to invest in and to assess. 

But there is no question that one of the great things about the 

sustainability effort is that it asks us first for data. We need to 

know what we are talking about. We need to know the baseline we 

are working from or we cannot demonstrate performance improvement or make good decisions. 

So, we do a fair amount of auditing and we are aware of our 

buildings and we survey and understand what is going on in them, 

look at the energy costs, look at what is happening to them, their 

age, their usage. One of the amazing things about buildings is that 

of course every day a couple of hundred little heaters walk into a 

building and walk out. They distort and change the environment 

all the time. We need to be monitoring very carefully to understand 

what is happening in those buildings. It is using that kind of data 

that helps us make our priority list. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Is it systematized though so that you 

know that every single one of your buildings is at some point going 

to be triggered for a retrofit review? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We have a process that, it is called re-commissioning. Every 4 years we look at the entire, every 4 years we look 

at buildings and we assess whether or not from the baseline—— 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So this is baked into that 4-year process. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. It is a very, very rigorous systematic data 

base project. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. On the purchasing side, back in the 1990s 

there was an evaluation criterion for environmental performance 

on the Federal purchasing schedules which I understand was removed in a subsequent rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It seems to me that it makes sense to help people who want 

to do business with the Federal Government, particularly small 

businesses, to be able to identify which products would be the most 

effective from an efficiency point of view. 
40 

Would you be willing to work with me and with the Chairman 

to develop a non-binding factor for the Federal schedule that takes 

into account energy and environmental performance? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We would certainly be delighted to work on that. 

There are a number of ways of going about trying to figure out 

which products perform in what ways along a green scale. I think 

we are at a time when that whole conversation is unfolding. There 

are all sorts of ways of assessing the performance of products and 

it is a, it would be a delight to work on that with you. Yes. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Good. My last question is that you are, the 

Federal Government, which you tend to administer behind, is the 

Nation’s largest consumer of electronics and you dispose of around 

10,000 computers every week. You have a task force working right 

now on your strategy for managing this electronic waste stream. 

What are your initial thoughts at this point on where GSA can 

make an impact in managing that electronic waste which, as you 

know, has considerable metals and both potential hazards and potential opportunities from recycling and capturing the waste? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. E-waste is a huge and emerging critical issue 

and we are working with the EPA to figure out, in a partnership, 

how we can attack this problem. There is a lot of baseline that we 

need to do. We are expecting to issue our guidance and thoughts 

in May and that will, I will be happy to provide that to you so that 

you can understand where our thinking is. 

It is about trying to figure out the entire stream, how do we, 

specify what we want to buy to put into the system and then how 

do we dispose of what we already have. There are enormous, there 

is toxic waste, there are precious metals that we should be recapturing rather than re-buying, and there is, of course, landfill considerations. There are international trade issues. We need to be 

sure this is a problem that we take care of here and not export. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Well, we will followup in May once they 

are out and my time has expired so I will yield to Senator Inhofe. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As I mentioned in my opening statement, I have been concerned 

about the rating systems that are out there. It was 2006 that the 

GSA concluded that the LEED was the most appropriate rating 

system. I would ask you, what kind of steps have you taken since 

then? I know you have not been here all that time, but have you 

taken to look at other rating systems, other technologies? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We have. Under the ESA, under the Act, we are 

asked to indicate a predominant system that we trusted and used. 

But we are asked also to review and reconsider every 5 years 

which one we are focused on. 

LEED has been the one we have been using. We have also, however, been looking at Green Globe, and we are more than interested in finding out the usefulness and the applicability of any of 

these standards and performance measurement systems so that we 

can guide the asset management of our inventory better. 

So, the bottom line is we are open to considering and always reviewing which systems steer us in the best directions, and we have 

a 5-year cycle that we are—— 
41 

Senator INHOFE. Yes, I was going to mention that ESA is not just 

an encouragement to look in, you actually have a deadline of 2012, 

I think. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. 

Senator INHOFE. Will you commit to a deadline of that 2012, as 

the regulations require, so that we can really get a chance to have 

a robust study of this system as opposed to others that are available and all that? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Oh, absolutely. We think of this in two ways. One 

is that we want to be sure that we are guiding our own assets well. 

We are a major player in the real estate market. At the same time, 

we want to be sure we are signaling to the market because we are 

a big player and in spite of ourselves, we signal, that we are signaling with the best practices and the best data and the best performance measures. 

So, yes, I completely commit to being rigorous in our review and 

being sure that we are steering both ourselves and the signals that 

we are sending about those kinds of—— 

Senator INHOFE. Let’s get, I think between now and 2012 we 

could get some updates because things are moving pretty fast right 

now. 

Ms. JOHNSON. They are. That is one of the reasons why this cycle 

is an important one to observe and not delay on. 

Senator INHOFE. Yes. Now, let me ask you a question. I have 

been on this committee, well, actually, before coming here in 1994 

I was on the same committee in the House, and I can remember 

so many different times you had to make these decisions as to are 

we talking about a new building as opposed to a renovated building, all these, it becomes very political. I have been guilty of that 

myself a few times, of looking and saying, what would benefit us 

the most. 

In many of the boards and commissions that we have, Administrator Johnson, we have the opportunity to have a consulting group 

or someone, a board that we consult, to make determinations. Now, 

I know you do have a board in terms of green energy and technology that is moving and looking at the financial considerations. 

Have you given thought to, is there anything out there that would 

serve as a consulting group that you could talk to beyond just the 

GSA or within the GSA that could help make these determinations? 

Because it is pretty heavy lifting when you are talking about 

having something over a period of time, when you write it off, all 

these considerations, like we do in the private sector because that 

is what I did in the private sector. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Are you talking about disposal or are you talking 

about disposal of real estate or—— 

Senator INHOFE. Both. Creating new, if you are a, we went 

through the thing on transportation, I remember, some years ago, 

and the question is always do you take something that is existing 

right now and you go through a renovation, or do you build new? 

All of these proposals are out there, but the proposals are always 

coming from someone who, obviously, stands to benefit from it. 
42 

So, is there any group, or do you think there is any necessity for, 

a group to consult on these things? This would be a fiscal consultation. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. One of the joys of being in the real estate 

business is that you are involved in a lot of local stakeholdering 

that is—— Senator INHOFE. Yes, you are. 

Ms. JOHNSON. One of the things that I have to say I am very 

proud of is that GSA, by virtue of its size and its history and the 

range of its portfolio, we have, I think, a tremendous expertise inside the organization that is then honed as we have to explain 

within the Administration and then to Congress how we are thinking about what building projects and so on. These are huge building projects and require, I think, that kind of scrutiny and care. 

I am more than interested in being sure that our process is as 

robust as possible. I had not thought about a particular board or 

source of other input. I am happy to consider ways in which we can 

be getting the right kind of support and advice. 

Senator INHOFE. Yes, yes, I think, and I am the last one to advocate a new board for anything around here, but I do know this, 

that it is even for your own protection because there are always accusations that certain groups are getting benefits. It is easier to 

talk about this before it comes up than afterwards. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes, I think the governance of the process and the 

way you get expertise is —— Senator INHOFE. Good. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Senator Inhofe. 

Chairman Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you so much. 

I am so delighted to have this opportunity to see you again. 

Ms. JOHNSON. It is good to see you. 

Senator BOXER. The last time I saw you we were freezing. 

Ms. JOHNSON. We were freezing. 

Senator BOXER. We were freezing on the San Diego border with 

Mexico and we were there because there is a wonderful new crossing point that is being built at that border with Mexico because we 

have tremendous trade there and we have terrible, terrible congestion there. So the Administrator came out to beautiful San Diego 

and we froze that day. 

It was cold. You know that song, It Never Rains in Southern 

California? Do not believe it all the time. It is not always true. 

Senator INHOFE. Where is global warming when you need it? 

[Laughter.] 

Senator BOXER. Well, that is right. I needed global warming that 

day. Actually, we got it 2 days later, but that day it was freezing. 

So, here is the thing. Do you know the cost of energy that the 

Federal Government from, the total cost? I saw it in one document 

and it was $24 billion a year. Is that accurate? Do your people 

know how much we spend on energy every year? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Not if you include DOD. I think it is even greater 

if you include DOD. 

Senator BOXER. Well, what you are in charge of? 
43 

Ms. JOHNSON. What I am in charge of? 

Senator BOXER. Yes. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Four hundred fifty million. 

Senator BOXER. Four hundred fifty million a year? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Four hundred fifty million for buildings a year. 

Senator BOXER. OK, $450 million for buildings every year. So I 

want to point out that that is a lot and we also, you have to deal 

with water and all of the other activities that go on. Is that an electric bill? Does that include heating, cooling, what is that? 

Ms. JOHNSON. That would be everything, yes, and that is about 

10 percent of the Federal Government’s overall usage. 

Senator BOXER. Only 10 percent, GSA? OK, interesting. Is it fair 

to say that, well, it may not be fair to say, but is there any coordination, since you only are involved with 10 percent, where is the 

other 90 percent coming from? 

Ms. JOHNSON. From DOD, I would assume. 

Senator BOXER. Do you talk with them about any of this? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes, we do. There can always be more and I know 

that they are embarking on a lot of different efforts. I am particularly in touch with the Navy because, of course, they are really 

very serious about their energy reduction so that they can spare 

themselves the costs and the security issues of carting fuel around. 

Senator BOXER. Yes. 

Ms. JOHNSON. So, the Navy is one of the places that I am—— 

Senator BOXER. I know the DOD is doing a lot. I was reading, 

Senator Inhofe, which is, this is totally your territory, but I am understanding that in foreign places we are looking to more solar, 

portable type of energy because it is so dangerous to move the fuel 

in some of these areas where we are in theater. So, I think that 

$24 billion is probably about right if you figure you are using 10 

percent. Is that right? Does somebody have a calculator there? If 

$450 million is 10 percent, what is the rest of it? How do we get 

$24 billion? 

Ms. JOHNSON. The $450 million, that is buildings. So then you 

add fuel for ships, vehicles, airplanes, it can add up quickly. 

Senator BOXER. OK. Because the President used a $24 billion 

number and that is huge. 

Ms. JOHNSON. That would probably be the whole thing then. 

Senator BOXER. OK. So just the buildings, I want to go back 

again, 10 percent of the buildings, or 10 percent of the bill is $450 

million that you are in charge of. Now, could you describe your role 

in implementing the Executive order of the President, both Presidents actually reduced it, saying the Federal agencies need to account for and reduce their energy and water use and pollution. 

Ms. JOHNSON. We have a number of different roles. The first one, 

of course, is to see that we ourselves are efficient. That is GSA, for 

GSA. Then of course through our policies and our high performance 

green buildings organization, we are doing a fair amount of data 

gathering, analysis of best practices, running pilots. 

Senator BOXER. Are you quantifying your savings? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes, we are quantifying our savings. 

Senator BOXER. Do you have any numbers for me as to what you 

are saving? 
44 

Ms. JOHNSON. I do not have any numbers right now, but I can 

certainly provide them. 

Senator BOXER. When will you have the first accounting of the 

savings from some of the things you have been doing? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Oh, I can get them for you this week. 

Senator BOXER. That would be really good. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I am just talking about quoting them off the top 

of my head. 

Senator BOXER. No, I understand. Anybody behind you know 

those numbers of the savings? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Some are real, some are projected and we will get 

you what we have. 

Senator BOXER. Would you do that? That would be very helpful. 

I appreciate it, to get that this week and hand it on to my colleagues. 

Do you have a goal of savings that you want to make out of this 

$450 million a year? What is your goal? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, our goals are constructed in a number of different ways. We are looking at significant goals around energy consumption. 

Senator BOXER. How much do you want to save? What is your 

goal of savings? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We are aiming to save 30 percent in our energy 

consumption by 2015, by 2020, and we are looking to save 16 percent of our water consumption by 2020, and we are also looking 

at—— 

Senator BOXER. Off of what year’s base? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Two thousand and three. 

Senator BOXER. OK. So I need to know what you have done so 

far. That would be, so you are going to get that to me on water, 

and on electricity. 

Ms. JOHNSON. On waste disposal, we can do that, too. 

Senator BOXER. Yes. That would be very, very helpful because 

frankly, we had President Bush and President Obama say this 

really key. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. 

Senator BOXER. As we struggle to find our savings, and I think, 

if you could, so I will close with this. I mean, I think if you could 

be a model and learn from the private sector, which you said you 

are doing, it is terrific because if we can do it here and it works, 

then best practices can go out to, for example, city governments, 

county governments. If you tally all the buildings that are run by 

government at every level and they all became cost effective and 

efficient, this is a good thing, I think. 

So, we are looking to you. I am going to look to you as Chairman 

of this committee for these answers and we are going to talk to you 

every few months about it and it probably, with the Chairman of 

the subcommittee with his leadership, I think this is key. So, I am 

hoping we can do this again in about 6 months and see where you 

are at that time. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much, Chairman Boxer. 

Senator Boozman. 
45 

Senator BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ms. 

Johnson, for being here. 

The LEED rating system discriminates against the use of most 

American wood products. So GSA, using the LEED system, discriminates. Can you tell me why? 

Ms. JOHNSON. I cannot tell you exactly why. I can say that we 

are looking at the LEED system to be sure that it is setting us up 

for success on all the dimensions that are environmentally fragile 

that we need to be paying attention to. 

Certainly, the understanding that I have about wood is that the 

wood content in GSA buildings is too little for us to use a LEED 

point for certification. But we can certainly, so we are not trying 

to set limits on the choices of wood supplies through that standard. 

So, it is about a sizing issue, I understand. But I can supply a little 

bit more for the record to, to verify that. 

Senator BOOZMAN. No, I think that is important because I think 

it is clear that LEED does discriminate and that you all are discriminating and that most of the wood products produced in the 

United States do not qualify. I would argue that certainly wood is 

very environmentally friendly, it stores carbon, and so I guess the 

other thing is that as you do the study, the review process that is 

done, are you going to have a public comment or are you going to 

be able to have it put in that way? 

Ms. JOHNSON. OK, I understand that the Secretary of Energy 

will do a public comment. So yes, there will be some public comments possible, absolutely. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Very good. So, you are looking into the wood. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Senator Cardin? 

Senator BOOZMAN. I am sorry. Can I reclaim for just a second. 

If that is the case after looking into it, how can that be changed? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, the LEED, LEED specifically is not a government measurement. It is managed by a not-for-profit organization. So, it is not necessarily for us to change, but we can—— 

Senator BOOZMAN. No, but how can you change the fact that that 

is what you are using exclusively? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Oh, well, we are under a five-year cycle in which 

we are committed to reviewing our use of whatever performance 

measurement standards we are setting up. We are currently in the 

middle of that and in 2012 we will be deciding what we should 

be—— 

Senator BOOZMAN. So, you could administratively say, if you 

agreed that wood was a problem, you could administratively say 

that we are going to continue to use LEED but also we want to use 

more of this product or that product? 

Ms. JOHNSON. I think our—— 

Senator BOOZMAN. I mean, you are not locked into this legislatively. 

Ms. JOHNSON. No. We are asked to promote good performance 

measures and in that sense we have looked to LEED over the last 

period of time and we are in constant review of that and we are 

in a specific 5-year cycle review of it. I think it is important for us 

to be as open as possible about what we understand about these 
46 

techniques and tools so that the rest of industry can understand 

why we are leaning in the way we are. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Right. But if you wanted to, tomorrow you 

could change your rule? I mean, this is your rule. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, we can certainly, yes, we can change, we can 

change it. What we want to do is be sure that we are in concert 

with the Department of Energy about it. The National Labs are involved in helping us to do these reviews. We are in the business 

side. They are in the science side. I want to be sure that we are 

in good alignment with them. So, it is not like I want to act like 

a solo player on that. 

Senator BOOZMAN. OK. Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Senator Boozman is the Co-Chair of this 

hearing. I would be very interested in working with you and with 

Ranking Member Inhofe and the Chairman on that issue. 

Senator Cardin. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, welcome, Administrator. 

Let me just make one comment about LEED certification. One of 

the things that we are pretty sensitive about in Congress is to 

make sure that what we do as Federal agencies are in compliance 

to what we would expect in the private sector. It is interesting that 

in the private sector, LEED certification seems to be the most popular use. 

So, I think before the Federal Government charts out on a different standard, that it is important that we be in compliance with 

what is generally accepted in the private sector. I think that it is 

an important point. Because otherwise it looks like we are exempting ourselves or using special rules, which I think the public does 

not want to see from the Federal Government. 

But let me point out, in your statement you said you want to root 

out waste. Yes, I will bring up the Federal Courthouse, but not for 

your specific reply to that, but I am convinced that if this was a 

privately-owned structure doing private business that it would be 

knocked down and rebuilt or the owner would sell it and move on 

to a new location because the budgeting in the private sector does 

not have the same restraints that we have in the public sector. 

Now, you cannot change the budget rules that we have. Only we 

can do that. But it makes no sense to pour good money into a 

structure that is costing us a lot of money and waste. Although it 

may make sense in your annual budget, it does not make sense for 

the taxpayers of this country. 

I just think you have a responsibility to inform us when you have 

facilities that really need replacement or significant change and 

that yes, you have to comply with the budget rules and the budget 

money that you receive. But we need your guidance to root out 

waste. 

I would hope that you would take a look at a building such as 

the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore and give us your recommendations as to whether it makes sense to put in the tens of 

millions of dollars that are going to be necessary for renovation or 

whether it is time to consider putting it on replacement. I would 

just urge you to take a look at that and work with us so that we 

can respect the best interests of the taxpayers of this country. 
47 

Ms. JOHNSON. I would be delighted to. I would also just like to 

mention that the sustainability agenda is a tremendous tool for the 

leaders of organizations because it is about finding the waste. It is 

about the culture of the organization and the forward leaning that 

we need to do in order to act on all accounts to be sure that we 

are not wasting money or making poor decisions. 

Clearly, the asset base that we have as part of, in our real estate 

portfolio, is one that has at times gotten a little long in the tooth 

and a lot of that needs to be aired, understood, and I do think we 

need to be in close dialog about it. I would welcome the opportunity 

to work in that vein, absolutely. Thank you. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you very much. I want you to bring us 

up to date as to how the Federal Government is in compliance with 

the best practices on stormwater runoff on their new facilities. I 

want you also to comment to me whether we, what we are doing 

when we are doing the lease to suite or are using existing facilities 

as to how we are sensitizing the developer as to their needs in regards to storm runoff issues. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Stormwater runoff is a tremendous issue, as you 

have pointed out. I am happy to say that all new construction and 

all major repair and alteration projects have the pre-development 

hydrology provisions that are included in the 401 Recovery Act 

Projects. 

But I will also say that we are really, as an organization, we are 

quite committed to stormwater runoff work and I am happy to say 

that internally we have sort of gone through all of our constraints 

and our loops that we needed to go through and we will be paying 

the fees for the stormwater runoff in the Washington area. So, I 

just wanted to be sure you knew we were talking with money as 

well. 

Senator CARDIN. Well, I thank you for that. I would hope that 

you would keep us informed as to how the provisions in law that 

require you to use best practices are affecting your building decisions, I mean, whether it is cost effective, whether there are other 

things that we can do, and whether we have any concerns as to the 

landlords we deal with in complying with best practices as it relates to stormwater issues. 

Ms. JOHNSON. All right. 

Senator CARDIN. If we need to change policy here or at least reflect upon the policy, we need to have that information from your 

Agency. 

Ms. JOHNSON. I think one of the wonderful things about GSA is 

that we are on the front line so we can see how policy is playing 

out and we are happy to share our observations and our understanding as a result of that. 

Senator CARDIN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Senator Merkley. 

Senator MERKLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 

Administrator Johnson. 

One of the things that I would find very helpful is to see how 

the GSA has ranked the cost effectiveness of strategies. In other 

words, is the very most effective thing you can do per money spent 

is, the White Rose Initiative, are you familiar with that concept 
48 

where essentially you have white colored roofing material, it reflects heat and therefore greatly reduces cooling costs? Is that more 

cost effective than putting photovoltaic on the ceiling or adding insulation? 

Because I think there is just kind of a thirst for being smart 

about what we do. I do not see anything in your testimony that 

gives any sense of any sort of cost effectiveness ranking effort. I 

suspect that has gone on, but do you want to share a little bit 

about that? 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes, we are eager to understand what we are saving when we are engaging in some of these new techniques or tools 

or products or services. I will say the market is rather immature 

on understanding all that performance. So, we are sort of at the 

beginning of gathering the data and understanding it. Where we 

know it, it certainly needs to play into our decisionmaking. 

This is a complex portfolio and just the dimensions of it, is it energy or stormwater runoff or recycling or waste disposal, what are 

all the tools and techniques and how do we balance, where do we 

put our energy? I would say we are getting smarter by the day 

about tradeoffs. But it is not like a pair wise comparison where 

these two things, one is more efficient than the other, then you 

have a whole other dimension you are working on. 

So, it is a portfolio management problem. I think that we are 

pretty smart about portfolios. But it is multidimensional. So, it is 

hard to have one checklist to say, go there first and go second. 

Senator MERKLEY. No, I certainly understand that. But in terms 

of a lot of these technologies around saving energy, and a lot of 

them around greenhouse gases, and understanding kind of how for 

what we invest we get back, even if it has multiple dimensions, 

would be very helpful because if it turns out that one technology 

is twice as cheap on the energy front and three times as effective 

on the greenhouse front but we are doing something different because some of us thought it was a good idea, that may not be, we 

would like to put a little more science behind this, which is something I think you have already expressed. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes. The Energy Star Program was a good example of it, helping consumers to be informed consumers around energy consumption of the appliances that they were buying. I think 

that we would like to work toward those kinds of, more, of intuitively understandable tradeoffs about cars, about buildings, about 

systems. We play a part in that. 

Senator MERKLEY. Do you have any aspect of your efforts that 

is related to vampire electronics, that is, that so many of our electric appliances utilize energy when they are not in use, and Europe, I think, is far ahead of the United States on this, but when 

something is sitting there humming when it is not being used and 

it could be programmed differently? Even chargers. I just saw one 

cell company advertising that its charger will turn off when there 

is no load on the transformer. Very simple, very straightforward 

and saves on electronics. If you are not familiar with that term 

vampire, I mean it kind of represents the bleeding of electricity in 

a harmful way. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, it makes the point. We are really, in our 

buildings, trying to look at tight metering, the sub-metering, so 
49 

that we can understand what is going on in rooms rather than just 

in the whole building. So that is one way in which we are trying 

to get more precise. 

As I travel around the country, I was recently in Silicon Valley, 

and talking to people who are, there are dozens of these kinds of 

products coming out and we need to be on the front edge of knowing them and then being sure that we are offering them for the 

Federal buyer. 

Senator MERKLEY. I have to say I am guilty of leaving my cell 

phone charger plugged in behind the dresser day in and day out, 

and I would love to have a version that shuts off when I unplug 

my phone. 

Ms. JOHNSON. As would I. 

Senator MERKLEY. A couple of other things I wanted to mention. 

I know I am running out of time here. One is that the 100 plugin vehicle goal does not sound very aggressive for the size of GSA. 

There is in your testimony, GSA is looking for innovative technologies in alternative fuel vehicles and would like to initiate a 

pilot to lease 100 plug-in electric vehicles in five cities across the 

United States. 

The Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposes language that would allow 

GSA to acquire motor vehicles that operate on emerging cleanburning technologies. Now, I am not sure if clean-burning technologies is related to the source of electricity or actually fuel combustion in a car, but you are impeded by a statutory price limitation clause. I am assuming that clause does not take into account 

the life cycle costs of operating vehicles. But why is the initiative 

so small and how does the clean-burning technologies relate to the 

plug-in electrics? 

Ms. JOHNSON. We would like to initiate a 100 car pilot project 

with plug-in electric vehicles. These are new items in the American 

economy. But we cannot purchase them because right now the statutory price level is set so that we cannot get our hands on it. 

When you run pilots, you find out what is in your way. This is 

one of the things that is in our way. Then when we can, we hope 

to launch with 100 and see what the challenges are and how do 

we synchronize the plug-in capability with the vehicles and how do 

we figure out how one would deploy this. 

There are a lot of questions that we need to get through and I 

think 100 is just literally a starting place. 

Senator MERKLEY. My time is out. I would love to followup on 

that. I would love to echo the concern about the standards in which 

one standard really looks at, the LEED standard looks at energy 

conservation at the point and therefore discriminates against wood, 

where if you look at the life cycle of wood versus concrete and steel, 

you find significant life cycle savings. 

The good thing is we are debating among fine tuning standards 

as opposed to whether or not to utilize standards. So, it is a, we 

are moving quickly in the right direction and thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Let me thank the Administrator for her 

testimony today. I appreciate very much that you took the trouble 

to come up and you are excused onto your other duties and I will 

call up the second panel. 
50 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. 

Senator BOXER. Administrator, as you are leaving, I really need 

those numbers. Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Let me welcome all of you to our second 

panel. I appreciate very much that you are here. I will ask, I will 

do a brief introduction of each of you and then we can take the testimony all the way through and then have questions at the conclusion of all of your testimony. 

I would urge you to pay attention to the little light in front of 

you that lets you know when your time has expired. Your full testimony will be a matter of record, but as a courtesy to the members 

and to each other, if you could try to comply with the time restrictions, that would be much appreciated. 

Mr. Sindelar will be our first witness. He has served as Client 

Industry Executive for HP Enterprise Services since 2007, supporting the U.S. public sector with a major focus on sustainability, 

Smart Grid and cloud computing. 

Previously, he was the Deputy Associate Administrator for the 

Office of Governmentwide Policy. Before that, he acted as Acting 

Associate Administrator for OGP. As Acting Associate Administrator, Mr. Sindelar directed an office with a policymaking role for 

information technology and accessibility, electronic government, 

smart cards and other emerging technologies. 

He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration at 

the University of Maryland. 

We are delighted that he is here and why don’t I ask you to 

begin with your remarks, Mr. Sindelar. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN SINDELAR, CLIENT INDUSTRY 

EXECUTIVE, HP ENTERPRISE SERVICES 

Mr. SINDELAR. Good morning, Senator Whitehouse and other distinguished committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to 

testify on behalf of HP Enterprise Services. It is an honor to be 

here today. 

HP is the largest IT corporation in the world with over 325,000 

employees in more than 170 countries. As a major producer of 

products, energy is the significant cost driver, in many parts of the 

world a scarce resource. Therefore, we must manage those costs to 

keep our products competitive in the marketplace. This fact brings 

our commercial practices in line with the Government’s desire for 

improved energy use resulting in a cleaner environment. 

GSA, as the major procurement agency for the Federal Government, is tasked with helping to procure energy efficient and environmentally-friendly products, and we have the same goal. Further, both HP and GSA are committed to sustainability by reducing 

energy consumption, increasing the use of renewable energy, consolidating real estate and data centers, greening our supply chain, 

and leveraging the acquisition of sustainable technology products 

and services. 

Adding to this portfolio, HP includes cloud computing, telework, 

telepresence, applications modernization and shared services as 

key organizational strategies to lower the carbon footprint. 

HP has proactively addressed most of these areas for 20 years or 

more. As a result, HP long ago learned that the green way is the 
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way to optimize costs, reduce waste, increase energy efficiency and 

be environmentally responsible. I will touch briefly on some of 

these areas. 

HP understands that operational sustainability is nearly synonymous with energy use and a catalyst for innovation. On March 10, 

HP established a new line of business, Energy and Sustainability 

Management, that leverages our data center energy efficiency and 

now applies it to facilities. 

We know that organizations that can see their total energy spent 

and address priorities for reducing consumption can save 10 to 30 

percent of their energy costs because we have seen those savings 

our self. We urge GSA in their acquisition process to emphasize the 

energy side of the sustainability equation as a best practice that 

will result in the Agency spending less on energy and more on their 

mission. 

In renewable energy, HP continues to set aggressive goals to buy 

more energy from renewable resources such as wind and solar. In 

2009, HP purchased 3.6 percent of its electricity from renewable 

sources and in 2010 we surpassed our goal of 8 percent by the end 

of 2012. 

HP is in the third year of implementing its Global Workplace Initiative. This initiative captures under-utilized space that results 

from an increasingly mobile work force which now, through enabling technology, is no longer tied to a desk. It has allowed HP to 

reduce its real estate portfolio from a baseline of 30 percent and 

operating costs by 25 percent. The environmental attractions are 

many. 

HP has the industry’s most extensive supply chain with more 

than 700 production suppliers in over 1,200 locations worldwide. 

For over 10 years, HP has embraced the challenge of raising standards in our supply chain through our Social and Environmental Responsibility Program with positive results. We are aggressively addressing ways to lower supply chain costs and reduce greenhouse 

gas emissions in manufacturing, packaging and transportation. 

Likewise, we urge GSA to be aggressive in greening their supply 

chain. 

HP was the co-founder of the Electronic Industry Citizens Coalition established to provide a code of conduct for the global electronics supply chain and improve working conditions and the environment. HP is partnering to develop sustainability standards with 

EPA and DOE as well as organizations represented at this table 

and the World Resources Institute. 

HP embeds these standards throughout the life cycle of its products including leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, 

LEED, certified data centers and an end of life asset management 

program second to none. In fact, HP complies with over 100 ecolabel standards worldwide. 

In that regard, HP supports a collaborative approach in the development of standards between industry and Government to keep 

costs as low as possible. As these standards are finalized, we advocate that GSA incorporate them in a meaningful way as part of the 

acquisition process as an incentive for industry investment. 

This concludes my opening statement and I look forward to your 

questions. 
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Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sindelar follows:] 
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Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Sindelar. 

Our next witness is John Bautista, Vice President of New Business Development at Arrowhead Systems Incorporated, a veteranowned small business employing approximately 250 employees at 

two Wisconsin manufacturing plants. 

The company is comprised of three divisions, the Busse material 

handling division, did I pronounce that correctly? 

Mr. BAUTISTA. That is correct. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Arrowhead conveyor division and A & B 

Engineering. We are delighted to have you here, Mr. Bautista, and 

are eager to hear your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN BAUTISTA, VICE PRESIDENT, NEW 

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, ARROWHEAD SYSTEMS, INC. 

Mr. BAUTISTA. Good morning, Senators, thank you very much for 

allowing me to testify. 

Our customers are predominantly Fortune 100 companies. Our 

products can literally be found on every continent around the 

world. Recently we decided to diversify into the spray foam insulation business and that will create five new jobs in 2011. 

Our business model is straightforward and simple. We are very 

serious about our responsibility to our customers, creditors, employees and the environment. So, we strive for excellence and work 

very hard to minimize our costs because we have to as a small 

business. 

We have recently been asked to participate in the GSA small 

business pilot program to reduce our carbon footprint. Our motivation for participating in this program has been to collaborate and 

exchange best practices and ideas with other pilot program participants. 

We also see that we have ourselves a competitive advantage because we are able to put ourselves outside of the rest of the customers that we deal with. So, some of our customers are already 

Tier One Government contractors so we are, therefore, subcontractors and look to help GSA facilitate their sustainable goal in acquisitions. 

Some of the contracting opportunities that we see are part of this 

initiative is because GSA’s rewriting the purchasing powers into 

new rules. We want to add the Federal Government as a contractor 

as well. These new rules equal opportunities for us. So, because of 

the small company that we are and we have established policies 

and procedures and products and services that we feel the Federal 

Government can use, we feel that it is a great fit. 

Another reason for our participation in the program is because 

it makes business sense for us. We exercise cost savings opportunities as we go through this and our employees are very enthusiastic 

in participating in this program. 

Some of the initiatives that we have been able to achieve is using 

recycled steel in our manufacturing where possible. We use more 

efficient motors that consume less energy and we also use sophisticated controllers that very carefully control energy consumption. 

We have also taken steps to reduce energy consumption by installing more efficient lights in both plants and we have committed to 
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spraying our own plants with polyurethane foam to improve the insulation in the building envelope. 

Having said all of this, our participation is not without challenges. In some of the challenges we see, there is a hard dollar cost 

associated with attending meetings and participating in the program. Another challenge for us is return on investment and payback. For us, a good return on investment and payback are 10 percent and no more than 24 months, respectively. Currently, some of 

these green technologies fall significantly outside of this window. 

As I mentioned, we can offer sustainable options in our manufacturing to our customers. However, these customers have to be willing to pay the added costs associated with sustainable upgrades to 

their products. 

That concludes my comments and I look forward to your questions. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bautista follows:] 
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Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. Bautista. 

My next witness is Doug Gatlin who is the vice president of 

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED, at the 

U.S. Green Building Council and is responsible for oversight of the 

family of LEED ratings systems in all major commercial market 

segments. 

Previously, he has worked at the Environmental Protection 

Agency, including as Team Leader for the Energy Star Commercial 

Buildings Program, he has managed the Energy Smart Cities Campaign, and helped the U.S. Department of Energy launch the Rebuild America Program. We are delighted that he is here. 

Mr. Gatlin, please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF DOUG GATLIN, VICE PRESIDENT, LEED, U.S. 

GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL 

Mr. GATLIN. Thank you. 

On behalf of the U.S. Green Building Council and our nearly 

16,000 member companies and organizations and 80 local chapters, 

I would like to thank the Chairman and the members of the committee for this opportunity to testify. 

Green buildings are an essential element of any business management strategy. They reduce energy, save water, cut waste and, 

perhaps more importantly, have a positive impact on occupant 

health and productivity. 

With an inventory of over 7,000 leased and 1,500 owned buildings, GSA has an extraordinary capacity to reduce the environmental impact of our Nation’s buildings and save taxpayer dollars. 

GSA has already taken significant steps to this end, implementing 

many far reaching energy efficiency and green building initiatives. 

I would like to focus on three particular areas. These are first, 

maintaining a robust budget for the Federal Buildings Fund at 

GSA, second, focusing on existing buildings as a primary opportunity to reduce waste, and then third, examining financial mechanisms that can boost efficiency in both the public and private sectors and support GSA’s goal to achieve zero environmental footprint. 

So first, sustained investment in the Federal Buildings Fund. 

This significantly reduces long-term costs to the Federal Government and taxpayers. According to recent estimates, including those 

of GAO, tens of billions of dollars are needed to repair or restore 

Government building assets so that they may function properly. A 

failure to update these buildings forces taxpayers to unnecessarily 

subsidize excess utility bills in the short-term, while leaving them 

exposed to additional long-term expenses as restoring and upgrading facilities becomes more costly over time. 

The Federal Government is now achieving significant long-term 

cost savings through buildings that use substantially less energy, 

cost less to operate and maintain and that lead to greater occupant 

health and satisfaction. In 2010, GSA testified that a study of the 

Agency’s 12 first sustainable Federal buildings shows energy use is 

down 26 percent compared to commercial office benchmarks, and 

top performers have actually achieved over 50 percent lower maintenance costs. 
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Yet, significant cost savings associated with sustainable Federal 

building properties are in jeopardy should GSA’s Buildings Fund be 

cut under the Full Year Continuing Resolution Appropriations Act 

of 2011. That is why in February USGBC joined nearly 30 real estate, business, trade and environmental organizations in a letter to 

the House and Senate leadership, which I have submitted along 

with my testimony, to express serious concern about the proposed 

cuts. 

One of the activities that is funded by the fund and Administrator Johnson referenced is ongoing commissioning of GSA facilities. I want to stress the importance of this activity, which is part 

of the funding that could potentially be cut. 

According to the latest Lawrence Berkley National Lab’s studies, 

commissioning, and that is essentially tuning up the energy systems, it is not replacement but it is tuning up existing energy systems to make sure they are working properly, has a typical payback time of 1.1 years and a 91 percent return on investment. This 

type of commissioning is arguably the single most cost effective 

strategy for reducing utility costs in Federal buildings today and is 

a very important part of GSA’s current efforts toward greening its 

Federal building stock and simply managing its buildings more efficiently. 

Second is a focus on existing buildings. To tap into the building 

sector’s full potential for saving costs and resources, it is essential 

to update both public and private existing building stock. A focus 

on existing building operations leverages taxpayer dollars through 

investment in cost saving energy and water saving measures and 

provides a return in investment over time. 

The LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance 

System uses measured performance data to track the efficiency of 

building systems and requires whole building metering and reporting through the Energy Star System for at least 1 year prior to certification. There are now over 900 projects and roughly half of the 

certified square footage in the USGBC’s LEED System that have 

used this O&M ratings system. 

Then the third I wanted to mention is financing of retrofits. This 

is critical for congressional support and for achieving deeper cost 

savings from GSA’s portfolio. It is tax incentives for private building owners to make their buildings more energy efficient. 

One of the key elements of the President’s recently announced 

Better Buildings Initiative is to reform the current Commercial 

Buildings Tax Deduction, Section 179(d) of the Internal Revenue 

Code, which was signed into law by President Bush as part of 

EPAct 2005. With a few key changes to this mechanism, which are 

outlined in my written testimony, the deduction could be used more 

broadly and effectively by commercial owners. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gatlin follows:] 
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RESPONSE BY DOUG GATLIN TO AN ADDITIONAL QUESTION FROM SENATOR BOXER

Question. Mr. Gatlin, GSA is undertaking a variety of efforts to improve the efficiency and environmental performance of both new and existing Federally-owned 

and leased buildings. 

What more can GSA do to improve the buildings it oversees? 

Are there any barriers—statutory or otherwise—that inhibit the Federal Government’s ability to continue to improve the efficiency, performance, and sustainability 

of the Federal building stock? 

Response. While the General Services Administration (GSA) continues to be a 

leader in advancing efficient sustainable buildings. As I discussed in my full testimony there are a number of areas that would assist GSA in this mission. 

• Provide constituent funding to the Federal Buildings Fund; 

• Focus on existing buildings performance through use of LEED for Existing 

Buildings Operations and Maintenance, expanding commission and implementing education and training requirements passed in the 111th Congress; 

and 

• Improve financing for new green construction and retrofits. 

RESPONSES BY DOUG GATLIN TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FROM SENATOR INHOFE

Question 1. How does LEED award points for the use of local products? How does 

this process work? 

Response. Like all credits in the LEED rating system the credits dealing with 

local procurement requires documentation and verification. Specifically, the current 

material and resource (MR) credit 5, encourages the use of local and regional materials from within 500 miles of the project for a minimum of 10 percent or 20 percent, 

based on cost, of the total materials value. This strategy is frequently adopted, as 

project data indicates that almost 90 percent of certified commercial LEED projects 

attain this credit. 

Question 2. Who are the board members of the U.S. Green Building Council and 

how do you avoid any conflicts of interest that may arise? 

Response. USGBC board of directors is located on our website: http:// 

www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=2382&. In compliance with Internal 

Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines USGBC, has in place a conflict of interest policy 

that board members are required to disclose any conflicts they have relative to each 

call or meeting agenda. That information is reflected in official minutes, and the 

person with a stated conflict can participate in the discussion (as long as the board 

or committee does not object) but must abstain from voting on the matter. Our full 

conflict of interest policy is also on our website: http://www.usgbc.org/ 

ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=3351. 

Question 3. In your opinion, has the emergence of additional building rating systems had a positive impact of building efficiency? 

Response. While having additional rating systems can assist in broader market 

transformation LEED continues to be the only true market leader in the United 

States. The GSA concluded in its July 2006 study on green building rating systems 

that ‘‘LEED® is not only the U.S. market leader, but is also the most widely used 

rating system by Federal and State agencies, which makes it easy to communicate 

a building’s sustainable design achievements with others.’’ LEED is also the only 

rating system that provides opportunities to scale green building principles across 

an entire enterprise by providing certification in Volume-Build, Portfolio, MultiBuilding Campus, Neighborhood Development and Residential programs. By aligning its green building goals within the framework of LEED, GSA and other agencies 

ensures that green building principles are credibly evaluated on true apples to apples comparison. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Gatlin. 

Our next witness is Ward Hubbell. Mr. Hubbell is president and 

CEO of the Green Building Initiative which he established in 2004. 

Under his leadership, the Initiative became the first green building 

organization to be certified as a standards developer by the American National Standards Institute and is in the process of establishing its proprietary tool, the Green Globes Environmental Assessment, as an official and the standard. 
76 

I should note, as Senator Merkley is well aware, he serves on the 

board of the Portland Chamber of Commerce and the Oregon Business Association. 

So, we welcome you from the far coast and look forward to your 

testimony, Mr. Hubbell. 

STATEMENT OF WARD HUBBELL, PRESIDENT, GREEN 

BUILDING INTIATIVE 

Mr. HUBBELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Boxer, Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member 

Inhofe and distinguished members of the committee, thank you so 

much for having me here today. 

I represent the Green Building Initiative of Portland, OR, the exclusive U.S. licensee of Green Globes, which is an online green 

building assessment and ratings system for new and existing commercial buildings. Our Green Building Assessment Protocol became 

an ANSI standard last year in 2010. 

The scope of my testimony today will be to share with you how 

our organization has worked with Federal agencies in ways that I 

believe have resulted in improvements in both the quality and the 

value of green building assessment and certification in the Federal 

sector in hopes that we can encourage this committee and the GSA 

to promote policies that allow for competition in this area. 

Green Globes is an established and proven means of evaluating 

and improving the environmental performance of new, renovated 

and existing commercial buildings. Green Globes delivers a comprehensive sustainability assessment through an interactive, webbased platform which results in greater ease of use, lower costs, 

and enables the evaluation of building performance over time. We 

also offer what we believe is the most credible, comprehensive and 

cost effective third party certification process that exists today. 

Green Globes has been used to certify about 7 percent of the cumulative number of Federal buildings certified to date. Green 

Globes is also used by major corporations, school districts, State 

and local governments and higher education institutions. It has 

been incorporated into law as an equivalent standard to LEED in 

more than 20 U.S. States. 

Green Globes is highly compatible with the guiding principles for 

sustainable buildings and the Executive orders that have been previously mentioned due to its focus in areas such as energy and 

water conservation, carbon emission reduction and continuous improvement. Green Globes is recognized as an equivalent standard 

to LEED by the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs, Interior and 

Health and Human Services. The U.S. Navy and the Army Corp of 

Engineers have broadened their LEED-only policies to allow for the 

use of Green Globes as well. 

In my view, one of the reasons an increasing number of Federal 

agencies are using LEED alternatives such as Green Globes is due 

to their realization that an approach for building assessment and 

certification that works well under one set of circumstances may 

not in another. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is an excellent case in point. 

The VA came to us in search of a cost effective and efficient way 

to assess and certify their existing building portfolio. We began 
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with a 21 building pilot program 2 years ago. In the course of this 

collaboration, we found a way to more accurately assess the unique 

systems within healthcare facilities, and then used that knowledge 

to create a variant of Green Globes specifically designed for these 

kinds of facilities. Recently, we won a competitive bidding process 

to assess nearly 200 additional buildings in the VA portfolio. 

In addition to being able to more accurately assess and certify 

these unique building types, the Green Globes tool will also enable 

the VA to cost-effectively screen a large number of buildings and 

implement selective improvements before spending time and money 

on third party certification. 

Another good example is the U.S. Department of State. Like the 

VA, the State Department was in search of a less costly, more userfriendly and faster way to evaluate their portfolio of buildings. 

They tried Green Globes on a few buildings and recently decided 

to use it to evaluate one of their campuses in Arlington, Virginia. 

They like the ease of use of Green Globes, its low cost, and its emphasis on energy performance. They also found it useful as a 

benchmarking tool since it is based on 12 months of operational 

data, enabling them to evaluate and improve their buildings over 

time. 

Finally, despite their current LEED-only policy, we are also very 

pleased to be working successfully with several regional offices of 

the GSA to benchmark and certify some of their existing buildings. 

I give you these examples not to suggest that Green Globes is the 

only green building rating tool that Federal agencies should ever 

use. Rather, to make the point that an open playing field has given 

several agencies much more flexibility to choose an assessment and 

rating tool that best fits their needs. 

It also incentivizes organizations like mine to be innovative, to 

keep its costs to the consumer low and to focus intensely on good 

customer service in order to win and keep business. 

In conclusion, I would like to say that given our many successful 

experiences with other Federal agencies, we do not believe that 

GSA should have a LEED-only policy. If general performance goals 

are set, as they have been, agencies should have the flexibility to 

use a variety of tools to help them achieve their sustainability 

goals. 

In their 5-year sustainability plan, GSA lists as one of their key 

accomplishments that they are a proving ground for new green 

building technologies. We believe their policy toward green building 

rating systems should reflect that. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hubbell follows:] 
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Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Hubbell. 

Now, our last witness is Mr. Jeffrey DeBoer who is the founding 

president and the chief executive officer of The Real Estate Roundtable, which represents the leadership of the Nation’s top 100 privately-owned and publicly-held real estate ownership, development, 

lending and management firms. 

He has served as president and CEO of the Roundtable since 

1997. He also serves as chairman of the Real Estate Industry Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an organization that is dedicated to enhancing communication between the industry and Federal policymakers on matters relating to building security, terrorist 

threats and incident reporting. 

We are delighted that he is here and look forward to his testimony. 

Mr. DeBoer. 

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY D. DEBOER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE REAL ESTATE ROUNDTABLE 

Mr. DEBOER. Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chairman. It is 

a pleasure to be here. 

You mentioned the Roundtable. I would note that Roundtable 

members hold portfolios containing about 5 billion square feet of 

developed property that is valued, even in today’s down market, at 

an excess of $1 trillion. We also hold about 1.5 million apartment 

units and in excess of 1.3 million hotel rooms. 

I would like to begin by simply saying that our members, by and 

large, find working with the GSA and in particular working with 

the Public Buildings Commissioner, Bob Peck, to be a very positive 

working relationship. Obviously, doing business with the Federal 

Government requires some additional expertise and work. But 

again, our members who take the time to work in this area find 

the GSA to be a very positive business partner. 

My comments today will focus on how the GSA, how we think 

the GSA can improve energy efficiency in buildings through their 

plans and through the discussions here in Congress on plans to dispose of assets in the Government’s real estate portfolio. 

I have provided to you a much more detailed statement for the 

record on a lot of different aspects of this and in particular I have 

detailed some of how we see the current markets across the country and the challenges that we think are continuing. 

Beginning, I want to note that we do support Congressional and 

Administrative efforts to focus on a more streamlined efficient program to dispose of properties. These buildings are a drag not only 

on the Federal budget balance sheet, but also on the vitality of 

local communities. 

I would caution a few things, that things be done deliberately 

and carefully as you always do, Mr. Chairman. But you need to understand there are difficult challenges right now in valuing of properties and that local markets are being treated differently across 

the country. 

Specifically, I would bring up four points that as you move to 

streamline your disposal program that you keep in mind. 

First, smart decisions about when, how and how many GSA controlled properties should be considered to put on the market have 
92 

to consider local market conditions. Today, the commercial real estate market across the country reads like a page from ‘‘A Tale of 

Two Cities.’’ Our recovery is highly bifurcated. It is characterized 

by a robust, optimistic outlook in select gateway cities like Washington, New York, and western Los Angeles. But many other markets across the country in commercial real estate continue to suffer. 

The point here is that new criteria and procedures cannot be a 

one size fits all program. These gateway markets should be where 

you focus now, not only because the local markets can absorb the 

product but because the Government can get a higher return than 

they otherwise might be able to get. 

Seasoned professionals need to be involved. The Administration 

has proposed this in their discussion. We think that was a very valuable thing. We also think the list of identified properties must be 

made public on a website and it should be update regularly. 

We think that the disposal process presents a rare opportunity 

to improve building energy efficiency across the board. I join my 

colleague on the panel talking about 179(d), the current tax incentive. It needs to be reformed, modified. The Administration has 

some good proposals in the Building Initiative and we urge you to 

take a look at this. 

Fourth, I think that we have to keep in mind that as we want 

private sector investors and owners to come in and buy these properties, and return them to productive use in the communities, but 

they cannot be confronted with unnecessary regulatory burdens. In 

particular, and Senator Inhofe mentioned this, I do want to highlight a regulatory problem that we see in the proposed Lead Paint 

Program. We think that Congress needs to press EPA quickly to 

provide a study, as they are mandated, by the way, under the Toxic 

Substances Control Act, determining whether there is truly a 

health hazard when retrofitting buildings due to lead paint. We 

think it is very important that this done prior to these lead paint 

regulations being issued. 

In conclusion, I guess I would say that the GSA real estate disposal program has a great deal of positive attributes to it. But, if 

not done correctly, it could hamper economic recovery and it could 

hurt local markets. 

We do think that if done right, it will hasten economic recovery, 

it will stimulate jobs in certain parts of our country, and it will 

help drive energy efficiency not only in federally-owned buildings 

but in the entire building stock. 

So, we at the Roundtable look forward to being a resource for you 

as this program moves forward. 

Thank you again for the opportunity today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. DeBoer follows:] 
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Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. DeBoer, it is good to have 

you with us. 

I will yield my time to the Chairman. Chairman Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you so much. I am really interested in 

this LEED versus Green Globes. Globe or Globes? 

Mr. HUBBELL. Globes. 

Senator BOXER. Globes. Because I asked Senator Inhofe, I was, 

when Senator Boozman was questioning about the wood, I was trying to find out from him about the issue and he, so I am going to 

ask the two of you to talk to me about this. 

The point made by Senator Inhofe is that in order to meet the 

LEED standard, you have to have a certain type of wood and that 

means that the wood, the building, in order to qualify, you have to 

import the wood from other places rather than use the wood we 

have in this country. Is that an accurate statement? Mr. Gatlin, 

and then followed by Mr. Hubbell. 

Mr. GATLIN. I think it is an inaccurate statement. 

Senator BOXER. Inaccurate. 

Mr. GATLIN. The standard relies on use of third party standards 

wherever possible and, in that case, the standard is for sustainable 

wood products and I do not—— Senator BOXER. Explain what sustainable wood products means 

versus unsustainable. 

Mr. GATLIN. It is how they are harvested, it is the type of woods, 

it is the forest management practices. 

Senator BOXER. I see. 

Mr. GATLIN. We have a lot of sustainable forestry in this country. 

Senator BOXER. So, it is not the wood itself. It is not hard wood 

versus soft wood. 

Mr. GATLIN. It is not the type of wood. If I could just mention, 

this is a voluntary credit. It is pursued in maybe 40 percent of 

projects. But you have to understand wood is not that significant 

a building material in commercial buildings. So, but we are not in 

any way linked to a standard that encourages use of wood from a 

particular location or destination. 

Senator BOXER. OK, and let me repeat this, and then I will ask 

Mr. Hubbell. Senator Boozman, I am very interested in your response. 

So, what you are saying is the fact is that there is no standard 

that you cannot use a certain type of wood. 

Mr. GATLIN. The third party standard, which we refer to in the 

LEED rating system, requires the use of sustainable practices in 

the growth and the production of the wood. 

Senator BOXER. But it is not the type of wood. 

Mr. GATLIN. It is not a type of wood, it is not a destination or 

a growing location of wood. We also have a credit that focuses on 

using regional materials. Those are materials that are grown or 

manufactured locally, and actually 90 percent of our projects pursue that credit. So, that credit is equally or more significant than 

the sustainable wood credit. 

Senator BOXER. So, it offsets it? 

Mr. GATLIN. Well, it does not necessarily offset it. It is just that 

we try to encourage the use of locally grown and manufactured materials wherever we possibly can. 
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Senator BOXER. Because of the shipping costs and all that? 

Mr. GATLIN. For our members, it was first and foremost because 

of the environmental benefits with using and growing local materials. But also there is economic benefits to stuff that is manufactured domestically. 

Senator BOXER. Sure, good. Now Mr. Hubbell, could you give me 

your answer to that? 

Mr. HUBBELL. Sure. The difference between LEED and Green 

Globes on that particular issue is that LEED gives credit for forest 

certification under one forest certification system called FSC. Green 

Globes gives that same credit, but we recognize not just FSC but 

we recognize other major rating systems that are used in the 

United States. 

The question you asked, Senator, about wood not being eligible 

under LEED. The vast majority of domestic wood in this country 

to my knowledge does not participate in the FSC program so they 

would not get—— 

Senator BOXER. FSC? 

Mr. HUBBELL. Forest Stewardship Council, or whatever it is. The 

vast majority of domestically grown and produced wood does not 

participate in that program and so they are ineligible for those 

points. 

Senator BOXER. Why is that? 

Mr. HUBBELL. That is a question for Mr. Gatlin. 

Senator BOXER. Mr. Gatlin, why is that? 

Mr. GATLIN. Well, I think you would have to have an industry 

representative of the forest and paper products industry. Many of 

the forest and paper products industry associations and their member companies, companies like Kimberly-Clark, are active members 

of the U.S. Green Building Council. 

I would like to mention that we have worked for about 4 years 

on developing our own benchmarks for sustainable wood certification and that initiative was put to our membership, we are a 

member organization, our members did not vote to support the 

adoption of that new initiative. I believe that, frankly, has to do 

with the wood industry not reaching a consensus on sustainable 

certification. 

Senator BOXER. OK. I have one more question. Can I ask it? 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Yes. 

Senator BOXER. I just wanted to say welcome to HP and I am 

proud of the work you are doing here. I want to quote you and I 

want to make sure I am getting it right. You said the green way 

is the way to reduce costs. Is that what you said? 

Mr. SINDELAR. Yes, that is correct. 

Senator BOXER. Well, good. Senator Boozman, the green way is 

the way to reduce costs, says HP. 

Mr. SINDELAR. Thank you. 

Senator BOXER. I think that is really important because I certainly believe that. I always think we argue here over the word 

sustainability. We do not have to use that word. It makes sense. 

You cut costs. So, for me, I do not want to get into a battle over 

sustainability. If you can reduce costs and reach it in a good way, 

I am thrilled with it. 
112 

So, I wanted, I was amazed to see, and tell me that this is true, 

that you saved $1 billion annually by consolidating your IT infrastructure. Is that correct? 

Mr. SINDELAR. Thank you, Senator. It is correct. We reduced 

from 85 data centers that served our internal requirements down 

to six in three communities including Atlanta, Austin and Houston. 

We are saving $1 billion annually now, cost—— 

Senator BOXER. That is incredible. 

Mr. SINDELAR. Over a 4-year period. 

Senator BOXER. So, would you have any notion of what is possible for the Federal Government if we did data center consolidation on the scale that you did it, what we could save? 

Mr. SINDELAR. I do not have that figure, but it would be very, 

very significant since the Administration’s initiative is reduction of 

800 data centers. 

Senator BOXER. Would you be willing, just for me as Chairman, 

and I will share it with any colleagues who want it, I know Senator 

Whitehouse would and I hope Senator Boozman would, would you 

send us a little bit of a letter just in simple, like a white paper, 

just a paper, on how you achieved this over how many years. It is 

amazing. You did not lose any of your functions? 

Mr. SINDELAR. No. Our business actually grew. 

Senator BOXER. That is remarkable. I hold that up to the committee. It is such a wonderful statement by the private sector about 

what you could do. Thank you very much, Mr. Sindelar. 

Mr. SINDELAR. Thank you. I will provide that. Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Senator Boozman. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I agree, Senator Boxer, that one of my companies is Wal-Mart in Arkansas and 

they have done a tremendous job of putting so much of this in place 

and not only being environmentally friendly, but saving the consumers money, being able to pass those costs on, that these things 

actually do work. 

I would like to get back, though, to the wood, and I think it really is important. In Arkansas, zero percent of the certified forests 

are eligible for LEED certification. Seventy-five percent of the certified forests in North America are not eligible for LEED’s wood 

certification credit. 

Can you tell me why, Mr. Gatlin? 

Mr. GATLIN. I believe, as Mr. Hubbell mentioned, the owners of 

those firms are not participating in the FSC certification process. 

I do not believe it is necessarily that they are eligible or ineligible 

but that they opt not to participate. They may not like that system. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Well, they are ineligible for your certification, 

based on your criteria. 

Mr. GATLIN. Yes, sir. Our criteria for that is that wood products, 

in order to earn that point, and it is a voluntary point out of 100 

points, that they would be participating in the FSC certification. 

That is simply because we try to refer to other third party environmental standards wherever we possibly can, and not come up with 

our own. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Do you have any relationship with the FSC 

folks? 
113 

Mr. GATLIN. Not other than just communication. There is a dialog like there is with most other industry associations, but no relationship, no formal relationship. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Why choose that as opposed to the certified 

forest designation? I mean, 75 percent are not able to qualify. Most 

of our producers in our States, which are Americans who pay taxes 

and stuff, they do not qualify. 

Mr. GATLIN. Well, again, as I mentioned in response to Senator 

Boxer’s question, our organization, we are a membership organization, almost 17,000 member companies, we spent several years 

working on an alternative. It did not pass our membership. So, 

those things happen sometimes. 

The alternative was sort of our last fallback because we do not 

like to create our own benchmarks where there are existing ones 

in the market. We tried to look at a number of factors, management practices, clear-cutting practices, and so forth. There are a 

number of factors and I am not actually an expert on the forest industry. But we tried to look at a number of factors in creating that 

benchmark standard and it did not pass because a lot of the wood 

industry itself has not reached a consensus on those practices. 

Senator BOOZMAN. I guess my problem is that then GSA is having, we as a Government are having to rely, I guess what you are 

saying is on your membership as to how they vote on these things, 

which to me is kind of crazy. 

Mr. GATLIN. I think, unfortunately, we are sort of looking to the 

forest and paper products industry to come to a better consensus 

than they currently have on sustainable certification. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Can you comment, Mr. Hubbell? 

Mr. HUBBELL. Yes, sir. One of the reasons that we founded the 

Green Building Initiative 6 years ago is because we thought we 

could do a better job of involving all of the relevant stakeholders 

in the maintenance and development of a green building standard. 

So, we licensed a consensus standard into the U.S. and then we 

immediately took it through a very rigorous process as dictated by 

the American National Standards Institute and essentially separated the organization from the content of the standard. We do not 

control the content of the standard. 

The committee that looked at this consisted of people from the 

wood industry, and from the concrete industry, and a lot of places 

like that, but it also included representatives from the American 

Institute of Architects and the USEPA and a lot of folks. So it was 

a very balanced, transparent process that resulted in the inclusion 

of four major forest certification systems, FSC being one and the 

other three, SFI and a couple of others. 

That was the collective wisdom of that committee over which we 

had no control. So that is how it has come to be the way it is with 

our system. 

Senator BOOZMAN. So you agree that the 75 percent should or 

should not be included? 

Mr. HUBBELL. I agree with the technical committee that recommended that four major North American forest certification systems should be recognized in our rating system. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Yes, sir, I agree. Very good. I am glad you 

clarified that. 
114 

I guess, what is the rationale that that is not the approach that 

you all take, Mr. Gatlin? I mean, that, to me, is common sense. You 

said that they had not come to a consensus, but again, I do not understand why. 

Mr. GATLIN. Well, in short, the way our process works is we have 

a technical committee similar, I think, to what was described and 

for energy, water, materials being one, and our materials technical 

committee years ago identified the FSC standard as the most objective, ideal standard for wood certification. 

As I mentioned, in trying to be more open or at least perceived 

to be more open, we tried to create our own sort of benchmark criteria which, as I mentioned, did not pass. 

But I think one of the points that is probably the most important, again, is 90 percent of our projects actually pursue materials 

credits that are focused on buying locally. That could include wood 

products and it could include many other types of products. So we 

see that as a real win and we are going to continue to work on the 

wood issue to the best that we can given that there is disagreement 

in the forest industry right now. 

Senator BOOZMAN. Well, OK, thank you. Again, thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. I guess the only thing I would say is that you cannot 

buy locally in Arkansas because zero percent qualifies. That is true, 

again, in much of the States, much of our constituency. So we have 

a situation where the Federal Government is discriminating based 

on your membership and I think that is a real problem. 

Thank you. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. Thanks, Senator Boozman. 

If I could just followup for a point of clarification to the point 

that you are making, Mr. Gatlin? You referenced that there were 

two different benefits that one could get with respect to wood in 

LEED buildings. One had to do with having been produced under 

the approved sustainability standard. The other had to do with 

having been harvested locally. 

Are they independent of each other, or do you have to be within 

the sustainability standard in order to get, to take advantage of the 

local harvesting benefit? 

Mr. GATLIN. Two independent credits in the same general category of sustainable materials. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. So, somebody who was not within the FSC 

standard could, nevertheless, get a LEED credit for wood that was 

harvested locally, say in Arkansas? They could not get both, they 

could just get the one? 

Mr. GATLIN. Absolutely. In fact, my well-informed staff has indicated that we have about 50, there are about 50 LEED certified 

products in the State of Arkansas and about 86 percent of those 

projects have used the regional credit, which includes regionallygrown wood. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. It does not fix the other problem but it is 

at least clarification on that. 

Now, let me ask you, everybody on the panel, I am going to ask 

you all the same question, and it is what can GSA do better to accelerate its, I mean it has very significant market power. What can 

it do to accelerate the investment here? 
115 

I would like to start with Mr. Sindelar and if you have the 

chance to mention something about supply chain management, I 

know HP has been particularly good in supply chain management 

and in pushing your top tier suppliers to audit and manage their 

own energy use. GSA clearly operates at a scale similar to or greater than HP’s and might have a similar capability. 

So, whatever you wish to say, of course, but if you could just 

touch on your supply chain management program as well. 

Mr. SINDELAR. OK, well, let me take the supply chain first. We 

are actually the largest IT supply chain with other 700 production 

suppliers and thousands of non-production suppliers. Our focus has 

been on a program called sustainability environmental, or Supplier 

Environmental Responsibility Program. 

So, we have made that a corporate policy from the beginning 

and, being a founding member of the EICC, which is the Electronic 

Industry Code of Conduct, we build that into our contract with suppliers and we focus on working directly with our suppliers and we 

have coverage of over 60 percent of them in terms of reviewing our 

work with them. 

But we work with them directly on, to the contractual arrangements, the self-assessment, then we go in and look at the accuracy 

of that self-assessment, conformity with the standards that are 

built into our contracts with them, and then we take corrective action with them in a collaborative way from an audit process, and 

I mean audit in the good sense of the word, and then we help build 

their capabilities. 

What we have found from 2004 through 2009 there is a 40 percent drop in conformance problems and we continue to achieve 

positive results there. 

On things that I would like to see GSA do, from a leadership position they need, we had a saying in the Office of Governmentwide 

Policy, which was part of GSA and still is, of course, when I was 

the head of that, is make sure you align the incentives in your policymaking role or at least make everybody feel equally bad. 

So, one of the things that I would like to see GSA do is build this 

into their acquisition process to the extent that they can, in terms 

of encouraging energy efficiency and sustainability through their 

acquisition process, through their technical evaluation and source 

selection processes. I think that is very important, particularly if 

you want companies to invest in energy efficiency and sustainability and reward the ones that did. 

The other thing I would say is the Government needs, it does not 

have one throat to choke. Nobody knows their total energy spend 

in most organizations. It is not transparent. So, they need to look 

at the total energy spend and address it in ways that are metric 

based. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. My time has expired here and I have also 

been summoned to the last bit of a Judiciary Committee hearing 

I need to attend. So, I am going to depart and allow my distinguished Chairman to conclude the hearing. 

For those of you who did not get a chance to answer that, I 

would very much appreciate it if you would make that a question 

for the record and give me written recommendations on what GSA 
116 

could be doing to improve its vigor in this area and the vigor of its 

suppliers in this area. 

I thank you all very much, and I thank very much, again, the 

Chairman for her courtesy. 

Senator BOXER [presiding]. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you for 

chairing the hearing and good luck on your next mission. 

Mr. Bautista, your company is one of the first to work with the 

Federal Government to analyze its operations and to identify opportunities to reduce emissions. Clearly, this is important to us, I 

think all of us on the committee that want to see cost reductions. 

So far, what can you tell us? Do you feel that there are opportunities for cost savings? Do you feel that GSA is moving quickly 

enough? I really could not get from them too much of a sense of, 

I mean, it was broad, they did not have specifics for me. So, what 

is your sense of it? 

Mr. BAUTISTA. We are one of 60 small businesses that are participating in a pilot program. For us, there are certainly opportunities to save costs as part of reducing our carbon footprint. At the 

same time, there is a significant investment for a company the size 

of ours to put an outlay such as that. 

As an example, I mentioned that we changed the lighting out in 

both of our plants to increase their energy efficiency. That was a 

significant capital outlay. As part of the new business we are 

launching, which is spray foam insulation, we decided to spray our 

own plants to reduce the carbon footprint as well as reduce energy 

consumption. That is also a significant investment. 

So, as part of this program, I do not think that GSA has really 

looked at what a small business has to do to participate in the program. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you. That is important going forward. 

Mr. DeBoer, when we were looking at carbon energy legislation, 

which I was sad to say we got out of this committee and then died 

a couple of times, a part of what was in that bill was an authorization of a program I thought would be helpful to the private real estate market, which was to set up a revolving fund that could be 

tapped at either no interest or low interest for the explicit purposes 

of old buildings, being able to get the capital to invest in energy 

saving projects. 

I remember when I went to New York City and met with a group 

of real estate, I am sure you have many from there. They were excited about this idea because even for them, and you point out 

what a huge group they are, some of these up front costs are very 

expensive. They have a payback, sometimes 2 years, 5 years, the 

bigger ones take a little longer. 

But I guess I would like to ask you, would you be interested in 

that type of a program? You would have to pay it back but it would 

be a revolving fund and as we got the funding back, we would lend 

it out. 

It just seems to me the low-hanging fruit on all of this, for everyone, in other words, whether you care about importation of foreign 

oil, which none of us wants to depend on, so it is energy security, 

it is cost saving, it is lower the carbon footprint, it is save money, 

it is all these things, it is what I call a huge win all around. 

So what do you think about that type of idea? 
117 

Mr. DEBOER. Senator, thank you, you raise a lot of excellent 

points that are irrefutable actually. I mean, we, clearly a significant way to address energy consumption and to reduce costs and 

to make businesses more productive is to make their buildings 

more energy efficient. We think you can get a very strong bang for 

the buck by focusing in that area, particularly on existing buildings, as you mentioned. We have statistics, and they range from 75 

percent to as high as 90 percent, of the building stock that is going 

to be standing in America in 2030 is standing today. 

Senator BOXER. How much? Say it again. 

Mr. DEBOER. Well, some people say 70 percent, some people say 

as much as 90 percent. But the point is that a significant number 

of the buildings that are currently built today will be standing in 

2030. So, if we want to achieve great energy efficiency many years 

from now, the focus is not on new development. 

Senator BOXER. Yes. 

Mr. DEBOER. New development will naturally be energy efficient. 

We need incentives and we need financial programs to make the 

existing buildings retrofit in a correct way. One of the problems is 

financing for a large number of individuals, even prior to the current economic situation. So, your revolving fund concept was one 

that we supported and our New York folks that you mentioned 

found it to be a very attractive thing to do. 

We have suggested in our testimony another approach to this 

which might be to do a pilot program where you have a credit enhancement from the Department of Energy. Currently, there are financing programs out there for energy saving activities in nuclear 

and solar and some other things. Why not have a credit enhancement to get lower, more attractive financing if you are going to retrofit your building? We are not talking about a permanent program. We are talking about something that might jump start the 

private market in this area. 

Senator BOXER. That is interesting. What I like about it is it is 

an existing program so you just have to add eligibility. 

Mr. DEBOER. Correct. We think that current law allows DOE to 

go in this area. 

Senator BOXER. Really? 

Mr. DEBOER. We do. If they so chose. Perhaps a nudge from you 

would be very helpful there, Senator. But your points are absolutely well taken. It is very expensive to do this. We should focus 

on existing buildings, there are ways to do it, Energy Star, LEED, 

these other programs are all positive. But we need to be rewarding 

people to do things and to make their properties more energy efficient. 

Senator BOXER. Well, in California, you probably know, we have 

terrific, when you put together this Federal credit for solar roofs 

and what we do in California, it is terrific. I mean you spend, I do 

not know, $35,000, I am making this pretty accurate, to put a solar 

roof on a home that will pretty much cover all of its electric bills 

and you get back a very nice, reduce it by one third. 

Mr. DEBOER. May I? 

Senator BOXER. Yes. 

Mr. DEBOER. The other, obviously focusing on getting financing 

is a significant thing, but this tax incentive that you were very ac-
118 

tive in when it was originally put in place, it does have some deficiencies that could be corrected that no one saw at the time and 

the Administration has put forward some very good proposals on 

this so-called 179 deduction to make it work and that would be 

very powerful as well. 

Senator BOXER. Well, would you work with us? Because I am 

very interested, I mean, this is something that is really troubling 

me that it is such as obvious place. I mean, first of all, you get the 

capital, people are hired, small businesses, private sector people, 

terrific stimulus, and then the payback is so good, and then the 

businesses have more funding in their pocket to reinvest in another 

project, painting the building or hiring more custodians or whatever it is. I just think it is as jobs are the major consideration still 

for us, just this is an obvious one and reduces the carbon pollution. 

Mr. DEBOER. We would be happy to work with you. 

Senator BOXER. I would love it. So, first of all, I think we would 

like to write to DOE and raise this point. Then, these corrections, 

do you think they need to be made legislatively or could they 

be—— 

Mr. DEBOER. In the tax deduction area? 

Senator BOXER. Yes. 

Mr. DEBOER. They would need a tax bill, yes. 

Senator BOXER. OK. All right. Well, let us take a look at what 

we can do and then I will look at also the program that I, there 

is a big move here to do an Infrastructure Bank and the Infrastructure Bank, it is a Kerry bill with Senator Hutchison, it is going to 

look at, I think the capitalization is $10 billion. Is that right? Yes, 

$10 billion. Then they are going to allow it to be used for various 

things. 

I would like to talk to Kerry and Hutchison and see if they would 

put in these types, because it is all a revolving fund process where 

loans are made and then they are paid back to the Infrastructure 

Bank. 

But the beauty of it is the savings would be generated from day 

one and would be paid back in 5 years just with the savings. So, 

the payback to the Federal Government could be pretty quick. We 

could say, in the number of years it takes to actually get the savings. 

I just want to thank all of you. This is very important. It may 

not seem too exciting to the outside world when we are looking at 

how to save energy. But it is exciting to me. I know it is exciting 

to all of you. You have dedicated a lot of your time and efforts, and 

some of you your lives, to it. 

I would love to see you two get together a little because I do not 

like to see the competition. We rate it this way and we are better. 

I honestly feel if you could get together and maybe have a project 

where you work together, it would be very good. Because what happens is, I am for this standard and I am for that, and then we lose 

the momentum. We cannot afford to do that. 

I just thank you all very, very much. I am very proud of the work 

that you are all doing. 

We stand adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the committees were adjourned.] 

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