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36–796 PDF 2007

FEDERAL LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE

IN ENERGY CONSERVATION - NO

COST QUICK AND EASY STEPS FOR

IMMEDIATE RESULTS

(110–62)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 19, 2007

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS Page

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi 

TESTIMONY 

Grone, Phil, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, Department of Defense ............................................................................. 8

Lipinski, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois .... 4

Stanley, Neil, Chief of Staff/Acting Associate Director of Energy, District 

of Columbia Department of the Environment ................................................... 8

Walraven, Brenna S., RPA, CPM, Chairman-Elect, Building Owners and 

Managers Association International ................................................................... 8

Winstead, David L., Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General 

Services Administration ...................................................................................... 8

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Matsui, Hon. Doris O., of California ...................................................................... 47

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Grone, Philip W. ...................................................................................................... 49

Walraven, Brenna .................................................................................................... 60

Winstead, David L. .................................................................................................. 73

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Grone, Phil, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, Department of Defense:

Response to question from Rep. Norton ............................................................. 30

Response to question from Rep. Norton ............................................................. 36

Response to question from Rep. Norton ............................................................. 38

Response to question from Rep. Norton ............................................................. 42

Response to question from Rep. Norton ............................................................. 44

Walraven, Brenna S., RPA, CPM, Chairman-Elect, Building Owners and 

Managers Association International, slide displays on Energy Star ............... 71

Winstead, David L., Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General 

Services Administration, Memorandum for Assistant Regional 

Administratiors, PBS, on Presidential Directive on Energy and Fuel Conservation by Federal Agencies ............................................................................ 91

vi


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(1)

HEARING ON FEDERAL LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE ON ENERGY CONSERVATION: NO 

COST QUICK AND EASY STEPS FOR IMMEDIATE RESULTS 

Thursday, July 19, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC

BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eleanor 

Holmes Norton [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. NORTON. The Subcommittee will come to order. 

You will notice I delayed starting the Subcommittee hearing 

until we let the sunlight in. This is a Subcommittee hearing on energy conservation. It is focusing on ways to conserve before our 

very eyes. 

Before our eyes is the natural sunlight except that in every Committee room in the House of Representatives, we block out the sun 

and depend upon these lights. I have asked that these lights be 

turned down and that we rely on natural sunlight to the extent 

possible. 

I am also seeking to experiment to see whether the camera 

which records our hearings can see with the natural sunlight, the 

way we do when we watch television. We sit in our offices and 

watch television. I don’t see anybody turning off the lights. Television comes into our house, and it doesn’t say we can’t record you 

unless you turn out the sunlight. In fact, they tell us sometimes to 

come out into the sunlight. 

We are trying to begin by practicing what we preach, particularly 

since this is a hearing on Federal Leadership by Example on Energy Conservation: No Cost Quick and Easy Steps for Immediate 

Results. 

I am pleased to welcome our panel and others who are here 

today for this first in a series of hearings that could be entitled 

Greening the Federal Sector. We have selected a somewhat more 

serious and descriptive title that I have just indicated. 

The title reflects our impatience with this Country’s pace in confronting the national and international energy crisis that is proceeding at a breathtaking pace while the world stares with open 

mouths. Yet, we already know of uncomplicated ways to proceed 

that will cost little or nothing while producing big dividends in enVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:35 Feb 26, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
2

ergy savings including gas, electricity, oil, air conditioning, water 

and all the rest. We begin a more aggressive pursuit of these methods today. 

According to a September, 2006, Department of Energy report, 

the public and private building sector together account for an 

amazing 39 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, more than 

both the transportation and industry sectors. 

Even more surprising, public and private sector buildings like 

those under our Committee-Subcommittee jurisdiction are responsible for 71 percent of U.S. electricity consumption. These buildings 

in the United States alone account for 9.8 percent of carbon dioxide 

emissions worldwide. 

U.S. buildings are responsible for nearly the same amount of carbon emissions as all sectors of the economies of Japan, France and 

the United Kingdom combined. The Federal Government is the 

world’s single largest energy consumer and the more prolific in 

wasting energy in the world today. 

Yet, for years, our Government has pursued and achieved energy 

savings that demonstrate that we are capable of moving with far 

greater results. Primary energy use by the Federal Government, 

for example, fell by 13 percent during the past 20 years with a 25 

percent decrease in energy costs in real terms despite a 27 percent 

increase in fuel prices in the U.S. in 2005. We will learn today how 

these results were achieved and how to build on them. 

The first obligation of Congress in achieving energy savings is 

not big spending on energy technology but moving in earnest to 

conservation measures, many of which exist on paper right now, on 

Federal paper right now, and providing the appropriate incentives 

and authority to enforce these measures. Both common sense and 

Federal budget constraints require a focus first on energy conservation methods at home where we live, where we work. 

This Subcommittee has jurisdiction over General Services Administration activities and programs as the property manager for 

the Federal Government. 

GSA itself owns 1,500 Federal buildings comprising over 175 million square feet of space. The Agency leases another 7,100 buildings with a total rentable area of over 176 million square feet of 

space. Because GSA is a leaseholder for the vast majority of office 

space controlled by the Federal Government, that Agency also can 

play a pivotal in energy conservation for the private sector as well. 

The Department of Defense also owns and manages a huge portfolio of real estate assets including military housing, military 

bases, maintenance and operation centers, community facilities, 

hospitals, troop mess and housing facilities and on and on. 

DOD real estate assets amount to just over 2 billion square feet 

of space with a replacement value of $653 billion. 

Although our Subcommittee does not have jurisdiction over DOD 

facilities, we hope that what we develop in no and low cost energy 

savings ideas and methods of enforcement will help upgrade DOD 

approaches and implementation as well. 

Federal energy savings between 1983 and 2005 demonstrated 

that the Federal Government is moving in the right direction. The 

most important need today is to quicken the pace of conservation 

and savings and put teeth in what is being done. Executive Order 

3

13423 already requires a 3 percent reduction in energy use intensity annually and a 2 percent annual water reduction intensity. 

There is evidence that these and other targets are being met, but 

there is little infrastructure, authority and accountability. 

Most of the Federal opportunities for energy conservation and 

savings are familiar and small, but together they have large potential in the hands of a major real estate owner and manager like 

the Federal Government: turning off non-essential lights in office 

space after certain hours, powering down printers, computers and 

copy machines, avoiding running large machines during peak 

hours, buying ENERGY STAR products and fluorescent light bulbs 

and many, many other easy energy saving steps. These simple no 

cost or inexpensive measures provide immediate savings with little 

or no added capital cost. 

Some States have taken admirable leadership in energy conservation policy. Utah’s Energy Savings in State Buildings Act requires the Utah Division of Facilities, Construction and Management to develop incentives to encourage State entities to conserve 

energy and reduce energy costs. 

Virginia requires agencies to pursue energy savings activities 

whose costs are recoverable in one fiscal year. 

Among Nevada’s most interesting energy approaches is the requirement to implement short term measures that require only 

consistent procedural changes and daily habit modification and another requiring short term measures which can be implemented by 

State agencies within the present fiscal year to reduce or limit energy usage and plan for energy conservation without new legislation and within existing budget constraints. 

To do our part as perhaps the largest office space holder in the 

world and to become a leader in the field of office space energy conservation, we will need to codify what precisely is expected of agencies and of personnel who will be held responsible. 

In addition, for the first time, we who serve on this Subcommittee will have a formidable responsibility ourselves to engage 

in rigorous oversight of energy use and conservation in the Federal 

sector as if our lives depended on it. As a matter of fact, the life 

of the planet does. 

I am pleased now to hear from our Ranking Member in substitution but please to have her in fact, Mrs. Capito. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, for holding 

today’s hearing on energy conservation, and I appreciate the opportunity to hear witnesses talk about simple, yet effective, steps we 

can take to reduce our energy usage and reduce taxpayer dollars. 

I would like to welcome our colleague and our Committee Member, Mr. Dan Lipinski. I know you have a strong interest in this 

matter, and I look forward to hearing your statement. 

We will also be hearing from some other experts who can help 

us find those quick, cost-free and efficient ways to save energy in 

all of our Government buildings. 

To put this in perspective, I think the Chairwoman has alluded 

to many of the statistics, but the buildings in this Country consume—I didn’t realize this—40 percent of the total energy in the 

United States and 70 percent of the electricity. We will hear about 

4

how even small reductions in the energy consumed by these buildings can have a large cumulative effect. 

You mentioned turning out the lights at night. It does always 

amaze me, being brought up in a house where you were supposed 

to turn the light out of every room every time you leave, and when 

you leave at night these buildings many times are lit up. You can 

even see the TVs going in the windows, and the lights are on as 

well. I think we need to all be cognizant of at what cost we are 

doing this. 

I hope our witnesses can discuss how these initiatives can be 

combined with comprehensive energy savings strategies for specific 

buildings and building complexes. GSA, in particular, its mission 

is to help its client agencies meet their environmental obligations. 

GSA has made significant investments in energy saving solutions 

and has achieved a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption by 

the Energy Policy Act of 1992. 

In the past, GSA was eager to demonstrate energy conservation 

and acquired the services of Pepco Energy Services to serve as a 

general contractor and project manager of the GSA’s new photovoltaic system. This solar generating electricity provides power for 

the central cooling plant at the Suitland Federal Center. I hope we 

can hear a little bit more about that. 

The Defense Department has also sought Pepco’s advice when it 

had to cut greenhouse emissions by 30 percent in the military district of Washington. The DOD was advised to change lighting fixtures, install cold climate windows and retrofit the cooling system 

among other things. These small but important changes amounted 

to over 200 million in energy savings over the contract term. 

I hope our witnesses will address the comprehensive energy savings procedures and, with their advice, one day we hope to be able 

to obtain a cleaner and more efficient Federal Government. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses and thank you 

again, Madam Chair, for this hearing. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mrs. Capito. 

Mr. Arcuri, do you have an opening statement? 

Mr. ARCURI. No ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. We are going to go to our first witness, and we are 

pleased to welcome Congressman Lipinski, especially pleased since 

he earlier came forward with a bill which we have already incorporated in the pending bill from this Committee on energy. 

I am pleased to welcome you here and hear your testimony, Mr. 

Lipinski. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DAN LIPINSKI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you 

for letting the light in. 

I said earlier when we had a hearing, and you had mentioned 

about how we have these curtains blocking all the light, that it 

took me a while before I even knew that there were windows behind these curtains in a lot of these Committee rooms. Thank you 

for doing that. 

Chairwoman Norton, Mrs. Capito, Mr. Arcuri, today, Americans 

are rightly concerned about the impact of foreign energy dependVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:35 Feb 26, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
5

ence on our national security and the effects of global climate 

change on the planet. I applaud Chairwoman Norton for holding 

this hearing because I firmly believe that the Government must 

lead by example, but when it comes to energy conservation, the 

Federal Government because of its size also has a significant direct 

impact on energy usage and the environment. 

That is why earlier this year, my colleague, Bob Inglis and I introduced the Bulb Replacement in Government with High Efficiency Technology Energy Savings Act known as the BRIGHT Energy Savings Act. This bill will help us to address both environmental and energy issues by cutting down significantly on energy 

usage and emissions of global warming gases by the Federal Government while at the same time saving millions of taxpayer dollars. It is a win for the environment, a win for national security 

and a win for American taxpayers. 

Our legislation directs the General Services Administration to replace currently used low efficiency light bulbs with high efficiency 

bulbs whenever a bulb is replaced or installed in a Federal GSA 

building. 

The impact of the BRIGHT Energy Savings Act could be significant. The Chairwoman discussed the number and size of buildings 

that GSA owns and also manages. Our figures show at least three 

million lights throughout the Federal Government could be upgraded to high efficiency bulbs under our legislation. 

The type of high efficiency bulb that will mostly likely be used 

today is the ENERGY STAR certificated compact fluorescent light 

bulb known as a CFL. CFLs use approximately 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs, provide the same amount of light, 

and they last approximately 8 to 10 times longer. Replacing an ordinary bulb with a comparable CFL saves up to $74 in energy costs 

over the bulb’s lifetime. 

It is easy to see that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars can 

be saved, implementing this bill. By converting just one conventional 60 watt incandescent bulb to a 13 watt CFL of the same 

brightness, we can prevent the burning of 110 pounds of coal and 

the release of 450 pounds of climate changing greenhouse gases 

into the atmosphere. 

If the Federal Government makes this action and it leads every 

American household to just swap one bulb for a CFL, the Country 

would save $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal and keep 2 million cars worth of greenhouse gas 

emissions from entering the atmosphere. That is just one bulb in 

every home, and every home has about 30 light bulbs. The possibilities are great. 

Ms. NORTON. Speak more closely into your microphone like I am. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. All right. 

Ms. NORTON. This room is so cavernous that it is easy for your 

voice to get lost. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. As an engineer by training, I am fascinated by the 

promise of new and emerging technologies and what they mean for 

our future. In addition to CFLs, new halogen technologies are expected to become commercially available later this year. Further 

down the road, LEDs, light-emitting diodes, will revolutionize the 

6

lighting industry leading to vastly more efficient lighting and the 

prospects of bulbs that do not burn out. 

Much of this technology represents American ingenuity and innovation. It provides hope for a brighter future. With the Federal 

Government purchasing large quantities of these high efficiency 

bulbs, this next generation of technology will be less costly to put 

into American homes. 

I am pleased that a bipartisan group of more than 80 Members 

have joined us on the BRIGHT Energy Savings Act. Just last 

month, the language of this bill was adopted into the Committee’s 

Transportation Energy Security and Climate Change Mitigation 

Act. Now we need to move this important legislation from this 

Committee forward. 

In addition, Representative Bob Inglis, Ed Markey, and Mark 

Kirk join me in amending the fiscal year 2008 Defense Authorization Bill with similar language requiring the DOD to use energy efficient lighting to the fullest extent deemed feasible. 

Finally, Representative Inglis and I have worked with Representative Jane Harman and Fred Upton to amend every House appropriations bill that comes to the floor this year with similar language requiring the use of high efficiency bulbs. Combined, all 

these efforts will apply a high efficiency lighting requirement on 

virtually every Federal agency and facility. This is a practical, common sense approach that is simply the right thing to do. 

I applaud Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Oberstar for their efforts 

to make Congress a model for the Country and for the world. 

I would also like to thank Chairwoman Norton for working with 

me on this important issue and allowing me to testify today. 

It is rare when we are talking about saving energy, becoming 

more energy independent, cutting down on global warming gases. 

It is rare when we can do these things and at the same time save 

money. It is just common sense that the Federal Government lead 

in replacing our low efficiency incandescent bulbs with high efficiency bulbs. We can do much in saving energy, helping the environment and also saving taxpayer dollars. 

Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, thank you, Mr. Lipinski, and especially thank 

you for your leadership. 

It should be said that some of what needs to be done with respect 

to fluorescent lighting we see all around us, and much of that is 

being done by GSA in buildings, perhaps not in lamps. But in that 

regard, we hear complaints that incandescent lamps or incandescent bulbs are less expensive than fluorescent bulbs, and we live 

in a short term first Country. 

Why is that, number one and, two, are the prices coming down 

for the bulbs as far as you know? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, the incandescent bulbs are based on technology that was more than a hundred years ago created. We are 

still putting electricity through a filament to create that light but 

more than anything, create heat more than light. 

Those are very cheap to produce, and that is very true. You walk 

in the store. Sometimes you can find four of those bulbs for a dollar. But in the long run, yes, right now the CFLs last 8 to 10 times 

longer and the energy savings, 75 percent less energy. 

7

Ms. NORTON. What is the short term? 

This energy savings point has got to get across. You can tell people that something will save you money. If you tell them it will 

save you money over the next year, you might get them, or if you 

tell them it will save you money in two years. But unless you speak 

time frames, I think the short term fix in the American brain may 

not catch even though I believe it is catching on in the Federal sector. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, I think it is hard to say. It depends on how 

much you are using your light bulbs because the estimates are that 

up to $74 over the lifetime of a bulb will be saved by using a CFL 

rather than an incandescent. So it all depends on how long your 

light bulbs are lasting right now, how much you are using them, 

how much that you could save in one year. 

Ms. NORTON. I can see the difficulty. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is really difficult to say, but most estimates are 

that within a year you will come out ahead from the energy savings 

for using a CFL rather than an incandescent bulb. 

Ms. NORTON. I think the Federal Government does understand 

it to the extent that bulbs are used as opposed to fluorescent lights. 

This needs to be mandatory. It is not mandatory now. It will be 

when the provision in your bill is added to our energy bill. 

I would like to ask Mrs. Capito if she has any questions for Mr. 

Lipinski. 

Mrs. CAPITO. No, I have no question. Thank you for your efforts. 

I look forward to working together to find some solutions, and I am 

interested in your talking about using the different bulbs. 

I just have one question. Is the bulb that you are talking about 

the spiral? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Yes. Actually, I should have brought an example. 

It is the spiral bulb. These are fluorescent lights, but they are in 

the tubes, but there are also the ones that are spiral and screw into 

a regular light socket. 

They also have ones that now actually look more. They put something around that spiral so it looks like a regular incandescent 

bulb. 

The other thing is that some people say they don’t like the bulbs 

because of the type of light that they give off. There have been 

great advances made in CFLs in terms of producing light that is 

very much like an incandescent bulb that we are used to. 

In addition to that, these halogen bulbs, these new halogen 

bulbs, they are a little different than the ones that we use in some 

appliances now. There will be screw-in halogen bulbs coming out 

later this year. Virtually, you cannot tell the difference between 

that and an incandescent bulb, and they are still more efficient 

than incandescent bulbs. 

Ms. NORTON. Most of the bulbs you are talking about are screwin bulbs and you can put them in a lamp? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. In any lamp in your house or any lamp here in the 

Congress. 

Mr. Arcuri. 

Mr. ARCURI. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

8

I would just like to thank the gentleman for his hard work in 

this area and his leadership. Thank you very much. Keep it up. 

This is what we need to be talking about. This is the direction that 

we need to continue to move in, and I appreciate your efforts. 

Thank you. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. If there are no other questions, we thank you for 

coming, Mr. Lipinski. 

If I may say so, the interesting thing is we began with Mr. Lipinski and Mr. Lipinski’s idea which is already part of our statute, but 

what we are today about are things that don’t even cost that much, 

don’t even cost as much as the added cost of the fluorescent light 

bulbs. 

I very much appreciate your coming. I appreciate your initiative. 

I want to ask the next panel to step forward. We are going to 

hear next from Commissioner David Winstead of the Public Building Service at GSA, from Phil Grone, the Deputy Undersecretary 

of Defense for Installations and Environment, from Brenna 

Walraven who is Chairman-Elect of the Building Owners and Managers Association International and Neil Stanley who is Chief of 

Staff/Associate Director of Energy Conservation in the District of 

Columbia which has taken some important path-breaking steps at 

the local level. 

Let us begin with Mr. Winstead. 

TESTIMONY OF DAVID L. WINSTEAD, COMMISSIONER, PUBLIC 

BUILDINGS SERVICE, U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; PHIL GRONE, DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE, INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT, DEPARTMENT 

OF DEFENSE; BRENNA S. WALRAVEN, RPA, CPM, CHAIRMANELECT, BUILDING OWNERS AND MANAGERS ASSOCIATION 

INTERNATIONAL; NEIL STANLEY, CHIEF OF STAFF/ACTING 

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ENERGY, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Chairwoman Norton, Congressman Arcuri and 

Congresswoman Capito, it is very nice to be here. I am very 

pleased as Commissioner of the Public Buildings Service to join 

this hearing and your commitment to energy conservation in the 

built environment. 

I would like to ask that my formal statement be submitted for 

the record as well as some handouts and charts that I have for the 

Committee’s attention. 

Today, I would like to focus on four general areas, responding to 

some of the questions that we have had for Congressman Lipinski. 

I wanted to stress GSA’s recent history in terms of energy savings 

in our 1,500 Federal buildings and our leased inventory; number 

two, our building operations and customer outreach efforts to our 

tenants for energy conservation actions; three, efficient building 

systems and renovation, new construction. As you know, we have 

a very large construction and renovation program through the 

Chief Architect’s Office at GSA as well; and, fourth, utility procurement actions. 

9

I would like to also offer a few ideas that might assist the Subcommittee in further promoting cost-effective energy strategies in 

Federal facilities. 

Here today, I have Pat Fee who is Director of Energy of Building 

Operation and Maintenance, also Kevin Kampschroer who is Director of Research and Expert Services that really is our in-house expert on energy and sustainability issues. 

As the Chairwoman mentioned, Federal buildings account for 30 

percent of Government energy use. As much as 70 percent of that 

cost is electricity. Leading by example and demonstrating how we 

can reduce energy consumption through operation, customer outreach and effective buildings and cost-effective utility procurement 

is an extremely important and very well staffed out program at 

GSA at this point. 

We feel we have a very strong record of energy conservation. 

This goes back to 1985 even and 2005. We have achieved about a 

30 percent reduction in energy which we targeted by the Energy 

Policy Act. 

We have made great strides in implementing the President’s executive order which requires a 30 percent reduction from 2003 

through 2015. In fact, in 2006, fiscal year 2006, we reduced our 

overall energy consumption in our owned inventory by about 4.7 

percent compared to 3 years before. 

We currently operate our buildings at 9 percent below the private sector. BOMA, you will hear testify. We use the BOMA benchmarks as well as other performance standards in the marketplace 

to govern our actions and savings compared to other private sector 

buildings. We also are paying on the average 4.2 percent less in 

terms of utility. 

During the 1990s, Congressman Lipinski is certainly pushing 

this forward with this bill, but we had retrofitted existing buildings 

with increasingly efficient lighting systems. Our early goal was to 

reach about 20 percent energy reduction between 1985 and 2000. 

We are moving towards a new generation of integrated lighting 

products including building-wide design systems, task lighting in 

terms of ambient as well as desktop lighting, and lighting controls 

and new glazing materials. 

We are also increasingly managing the energy consumption in 

our buildings more effectively, and the NCR is a great example of 

this, and I will mention an action taken just two weeks ago that 

illustrates that. 

We have energy management practices, both energy tracking 

where we track energy consumption monthly at all GSA facilities. 

Our systems provide a status of energy trends as relate to past and 

future activity, and we also target opportunities for operating improvements in energy retrofits. 

We also conduct energy audits continually on our building, identifying both energy savings and life cycle, effective energy conservation and on an annual basis, we tackle about 10 percent of our inventory with those audits. 

Also, over the past 3 years, 33 of our buildings reduced their energy consumption by more than 20 percent. We review with our 

property managers at these locations their actions in terms of energy reduction. 

10

We use the ESPC which is Energy Saving Performance Contracts. We are essentially a private business investing in energy 

retrofitted buildings and from the savings of that energy, we essentially can finance the improvements that are being included in 

those energy retrofits. But some of these have included turning off 

perimeter lighting, obviously office equipment, also reducing the 

use of space heaters, eliminating some non-essential 24 hour equipment operation and obviously lighting retrofits. 

In addition, we are increasingly adjusting lighting control systems to match tenant needs and replacing interior and exterior 

lights with the LEDs, as Congressman Lipinski mentioned, the 

light-emitting diodes, and replacing gas engines with electric motors. 

Also tenant outreach is a large part of this, ensuring that we can 

incentivize our Government employees to embark on a number and 

we have done that in a number of ways. Our property managers 

are essentially working through GSA energy coordinators to implement aggressive energy actions for both our buildings and our tenants. There are illustrations of this. 

We do have one chart, I think, that illustrates that the best, and 

that was that just two weeks ago we had 90 degree days in Washington, and I think this will illustrate what, by energy control systems in our buildings in NCR, we actually were able to reduce. 

Even though the heat went up to 98 degrees two weeks ago Tuesday, we were able to predict that and adjust and dictate to the 

property managers within our NCR buildings to reduce the energy 

levels to adjust for savings during times that previously you may 

have had blackouts. So this is an example just within the last two 

weeks of using those monitoring systems. 

I know that my time is almost up here, Madam Chair, but you 

are well of our efforts with our owned inventory and the new buildings in terms of the Bennett Building in Jacksonville, we are saving about a 60 percent reduction as a result of integrating energy 

efficient design; the Duncan Building in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Also I think most notorious is last Monday, we dedicated the new 

San Francisco Federal Building in San Francisco. From the 5th to 

18th floor, essentially, it is taking advantage of the low humidity 

and the moderate temperatures in San Francisco. It does not have 

heating or air conditioning systems, and we hope to get about 50 

percent reduction in that portion of the building. 

There are some secured sections of the building that have regular HVAC systems, but we are essentially taking the wind flows 

and the design of the building to maximize returns as a result of 

the siting of that building. 

Madam Chair, I know I am up here, but I think I covered other 

examples of what we are doing, and I would be happy to take any 

questions at the end of the panel. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Winstead. 

Mr. Grone. 

Mr. GRONE. Thank you, Madam Chair, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate this opportunity to appear 

before you this morning to discuss the energy efficiency and conservation programs of the Department of Defense. 

11

Consistent with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Executive Order 

13423, DOD strategy is a comprehensive approach to reduce energy 

consumption, increase facility energy efficiency and develop renewable energy resources. 

In furtherance of that strategy in my role as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, I issued a 

memorandum on installation energy policy goals on November 

18th, 2005. Along with emphasizing the requirements of current 

law and the goals of the executive order, the memorandum established a goal for the Department to procure and produce renewable 

energy equivalent to 25 percent of total electricity demand by 2025 

where life cycle cost effective. 

The Department’s program to this date is demonstrating results. 

In fiscal year 2006, the Department reduced energy consumption as 

measured in British thermal units per gross square foot by 5.5 percent in buildings from the fiscal year 2003 baseline established by 

Congress. 

DOD exceeded the fiscal year 2006 renewable energy goal of 2.5 

percent. The Department’s renewable purchases and generation accounted for 9.5 percent of all electricity usage in that year. The national average is approximately 6 percent. 

DOD has achieved a 30 percent improvement in energy use since 

1985 when measured in terms of energy use per square foot of 

building space. Over those 30 years, as I indicated, we have reduced our energy use from 138 billion British thermal units to 98 

billion British thermal units per square foot today. 

Our tools are critically important in this regard. We have 

achieved significant savings using the Energy Conservation Investment Program. That program, a line item that is contained in the 

military construction appropriations request, is a competitively bid 

that invests in energy efficient upgrades for existing facilities. In fiscal year 2007, that was a $55 million program which in- cluded $19.6 million for renewable projects and just over $3 million 

in hydrogen fuel cell projects. In the President’s budget request for 

the coming fiscal year, we will increase the amount for that program to 70 million. 

The Department also makes use, as do our colleagues in GSA, of 

Energy Savings Performance Contracts which allows us to use industry funding to pay for equipment to reduce life cycle costs of facilities and pay those investments back from the accrued savings. 

Private sector financing through the ESPC mechanism increased 

from 2005 by 316 percent to our present position to more than $586 

million of award value just in fiscal year 2006. 

We want to build on this progress by increasing the use of 

ESPCs enabling DOD to have more effective, more cost-effective 

long term facilities operation and maintenance, certainly at a reduced up-front cost. 

Installations and facilities are in the energy security business for 

the long haul at defense installations, and we are exploring additional enhanced use leasing opportunities and public-private ventures to develop cost-effective renewable resources. 

But, certainly, we understand that the tools alone are not enough 

and that the culture change which the Chair has indicated that is 

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tant, and I want to highlight three aspects of the training and emphasis that we have placed upon that. 

The Army has made energy stewardship a critical effort as part 

of their broader Army Energy and Water Campaign Plan for installations, and they have included energy and water conservation responsibilities in the position descriptions and performance plans of 

its commanders and civilian supervisors. 

The Navy, realizing that creating this culture change is vital to 

achieving energy efficiency, instituted a multilevel plan for reaching its people through enhanced training. The Navy’s energy training program has directly facilitated the training of 2,500 Department of Navy personnel with over 160 becoming certified energy 

managers. 

The Air Force, under Secretary Wynne’s leadership, in establishing Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century, included 

improving energy efficiency as one of AFSO 21’s five desired effects. The others being productivity, asset availability, agility and 

safety, all of which are designed to help guide initiatives in key 

areas for continuous process improvement. Those who have been 

involved in continuous process improvement know that it requires 

the direct, very direct role of the individual on the ground to make 

sure that process improvement occurs. 

So across the Department in ways, large and small, from training to major programs, we are working earnestly in this area to improve our energy conservation profile. We have appreciated the 

great support we have received from the Congress for these initiatives, and we look forward to continuing to work with Members to 

improve those programs in the coming months and years. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Grone. 

Ms. Walraven. 

Ms. WALRAVEN. Good morning, Madam Chairwoman Norton and 

distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for holding this important hearing and for inviting me to testify today. 

My name is Brenna Walraven. I am Executive Managing Director of National Property Management for USAA Real Estate Company, and I oversee property management operations for a national 

portfolio of approximately 35 million square feet. I also serve actually as Chairman-Elect for the Building Owners and Managers Association International. 

I am clearly having a technical problem. 

Ms. NORTON. We would just like you to speak. You can all hear 

me. I don’t know why it is. 

Ms. WALRAVEN. Am I not loud enough so go closer? 

Ms. NORTON. Yes, go closer, so we can really hear what you are 

saying. 

Ms. WALRAVEN. Okay, I apologize. 

I am also serving as Chairman-Elect for Building Owners and 

Managers Association International, and I am testifying today on 

behalf of BOMA. BOMA represents commercial real estate professionals who collectively own or manage more than 9 billion square 

feet of office space which represents more than 80 percent of the 

prime office space in North America. 

13

BOMA has a long involvement in energy efficiency issues, and in 

fact last year we launched one of our most comprehensive educational initiatives in partnership with the EPA’s ENERGY STAR 

program known as the BOMA Energy Efficiency Program or BEEP. 

The BEEP curriculum is focused on no and low cost ways to reduce 

energy consumption. 

We estimate that if only 2,000 buildings adopt BEEP’s no and 

low cost practices over the next 3 years, energy consumption and 

carbon emissions will be reduced by 10 percent which would result 

in $400 million of energy savings and 6.6 billion pounds less carbon 

dioxide released into the atmosphere. I was asked to address some 

of these strategies in my remarks today. 

First and foremost, we recommend that all real estate owners 

and operators benchmark their buildings on ENERGY STAR to get 

an energy performance rating that provides not only a baseline but 

also, more importantly, provides a more objective measure of energy performance because it takes into account weather, occupancy 

and other building attributes that dramatically affect consumption. 

Next, we recommend creating an action plan on how to improve 

the rating and thus performance by setting realistic and achievable 

performance goals, identifying areas for improvements and then focusing on operational strategy as well as low and no cost improvements. 

When setting priorities, we recommend first looking at the lowhanging fruit beginning with operations and management, then 

looking at occupant behavior, lighting controls and finally short 

payback building retrofit opportunities. These ideas are not at all 

complicated, and many do not require additional expertise of the 

building manager or operators. 

By low-hanging fruit, we mean start by looking at building operations and management and regularly inspect all equipment and 

controls to ensure they are operating as designed. For example, 

calibrate thermostats and ensure thermostat settings actually 

equal the space temperature. Make sure the system isn’t heating 

and cooling at the same time which can easily happen. 

Make sure systems that are supposed to be off at night actually 

are off which can easily be verified by a once a month evening inspection of the property because a simple $100 faulty relay can 

cause a building to run 24 hours, 365 days without anybody realizing it is happening. 

Finally, implement janitorial best practices such as team cleaning and day cleaning which can shorten the amount of time space 

needs to be lit or air conditioned. 

In terms of occupant behavior, it plays a critical role in how facilities use energy. We recommend working with tenants to educate 

them on ways that they can help to reduce energy by simply turning off lights and unneeded equipment, switching to ENERGY 

STAR office equipment and appliances, using task lighting to reduce the need for unnecessary overhead lighting and locating work 

stations as close to natural daylight as possible to cut down on 

overall lighting needs. 

Lighting specifically is another area where building operators 

can achieve dramatic financial returns with low capital investment 

14

and use off the shelf proven technologies. Lighting actually accounts for approximately 29 percent of the energy used in offices. 

The latest technology often has a less than one year simple payback. Change incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents and convert 40 watt T-12 fluorescent lamps to 32 watt and even today 25 

watt T-5 lamps. Install electronic ballasts in place of magnetic ballasts and replace inefficient exit signs with LED exit signs. 

Many parts of the building are often over-lit. In these spaces reduce lighting levels, like we did here today, de-lamp and disconnect 

unused ballasts. Timers and occupancy sensors are also good ways 

to ensure that lights are only on when they are actually needed. 

Many building managers find that they are wasting energy. 

In conclusion, there are many no and low cost energy reduction 

measures that operators of public and private sector buildings can 

take that improve the performance of the building, improve energy 

efficiency and save money without at all sacrificing comfort. 

BOMA believes that the Building Owners and Managers Association should continuously assess their energy usage using the ENERGY STAR tools, strive to be responsible environmental stewards 

as systems, technology and operating best practices are continually 

improving. 

We thank the Subcommittee for holding this important hearing 

and look forward to working with Congress, the General Services 

Administration, Department of Defense and other public and private sector partners to achieve our mutual goal of improving energy efficiency in the built environment. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you for that testimony. 

Mr. Stanley, I want to indicate how much I appreciate your being 

here because you are here on shorter notice than the others. We 

wanted to make sure that the local government or State Government sector was represented here because we are impressed that 

some of the more progressive actions are coming from local and 

State governments. 

Mr. Stanley, we welcome you and than you for coming. 

Mr. STANLEY. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good morning to you and Members of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management. 

Again, my name is Neil Stanley, and I work as the Chief of Staff 

for the District Department of the Environment. My responsibilities at DDOE include managing all the District Government energy efficiency and conservation programs. I appreciate the opportunity to testify on implementing low to no cost quick and easy energy efficiency measures. 

I would like to take this opportunity to briefly describe a number 

of key current and also prospective initiatives that the District 

Government has designed to reduce energy consumption in our facilities. 

The first initiative is known as the D.C. Municipal Aggregation 

Program or DCMAP. DCMAP is essentially a program in which we 

conduct an online reverse auction for procuring electricity. 

Through this initiative, the D.C. Government is projected to save 

over $30 million over the next 3 years while doubling its environmental commitment by utilizing 10 percent of renewable energy 

sources. These savings cover the District Government buildings, 

15

our schools, the University of the District of Columbia, the Washington Convention Center, The D.C. Sports and Entertainment 

Commission as well as our streets and lights and traffic signals 

programs. Through aggregate purchasing power, the District of Columbia is able to save and reduce energy costs while promoting renewable strategies. 

The second initiative that I think is very important for energy 

conservation in the District of Columbia is the 2005 District of Columbia Green Building Act. The specific purpose of this legislation 

was designed to create a task force of green building experts, environmental advocates, government representatives and industry experts to develop sustainable air quality and stormwater management strategies to ensure the District of Columbia is greening its 

buildings. 

The legislation applies to new construction or substantial improvement of District of Columbia buildings in the coming fiscal 

year and includes the following requirements. The first is that all 

non-residential buildings must fulfill or exceed Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards at the silver level, that 

our public schools must also fulfill or exceed the LEEDs for school 

standards and that priority consideration will be given to District 

Government-owned spaces with requirements meeting or exceeding 

the LEED silver standard. 

The District of Columbia will also be providing incentives and 

grants to help defray the costs that will promote early adoption of 

green building practices by applicants for building construction permits for both residential as well as non-residential buildings. 

In addition to the Green Building Act, the District of Columbia 

has become committed to developing high performance buildings 

both in the government and commercial sectors. We are doing that 

by adopting energy management strategies that measure and improve energy performance through ENERGY STAR benchmarking, 

reporting, training of building managers and reducing consumption 

in all District Government facilities. 

We are excited about this new opportunity, and we are also excited about the opportunities that we have by serving on the Building Code Advisory Council Energy Committee. Through our service 

on this Committee, the District of Columbia is promoting stronger 

energy standards in our building codes so that new buildings coming online will be much more energy efficient. 

The District of Columbia is also working very diligently to track 

and audit all of our government buildings and schools to make sure 

that we are actively reducing the amount of energy that we consume. Based on audit results, energy conservation managers are 

being installed and building managers will be trained so that they 

can help to maintain these buildings at a lower consumption level. 

Finally, the District of Columbia is also investigating the feasibility of demands response options for District-owned buildings. 

These programs will help to remove the District of Columbia from 

the electricity grid and free up much needed electricity during 

times of heavy electrical demand, thereby preventing possible 

blackouts. 

Madam Chair, we believe that the District of Columbia Government can lead by example by decreasing energy consumption, inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:35 Feb 26, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
16

creasing our commitment to renewable strategies and building or 

retrofitting buildings that meet LEED standards. Although we 

have got a lot more work to do in meeting this goal, we believe that 

our recent steps that we have demonstrated show that the Nation’s 

Capital is raising the bar towards energy consumption standards. 

This concludes my prepared remarks, and I am happy to answer 

any questions that you may have. 

Ms. NORTON. I want to thank all four of you for testimony that 

is not only enlightening but testimony that helps us to understand 

how to get to the point where this is a matter of requirement and 

where it is done more automatically as a matter of habit. Some of 

your testimony has spoken to larger savings and some of it to culture savings. 

Let me begin first by noting that we have been joined by the ultimate environmentalist on our Committee, the Chairman. I ask 

Chairman Oberstar if he has a few remarks to make before we proceed with questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for calling 

the hearing and for your persistent work on this issue. 

I thank the gentlewoman from West Virginia, Mrs. Capito. I always think of Moore Capito. I knew your father. I am happy to say 

and sorry to say I have been around long enough to have known 

the whole family. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your participation and steadfast 

participation in the Committee work. 

The subject of this hearing is critical. We are going to pursue a 

vigorous course of action on all public buildings prospectuses from 

GSA, on life cycle costing, on energy conservation practices. 

We are going to require, as we have done in the six building 

prospectuses reported this year, require a life cycle cost analysis by 

GSA, a report on the benefit-cost analysis of solar conservation 

whether it is photovoltaics or other solar applications. We are going 

to do our part in energy conservation. 

The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has jurisdiction over 367 million square feet of Federal civilian office space. 

The annual electricity bill—it appalls people when I tell them 

this—is $5,800,000,000. We can cut that 85 to 90 percent with 

solar applications, and we are going to do that. 

We are going to make sure that GSA does its part and save the 

public money, stimulate the solar energy industry that has on its 

own, without the Government has vigorous a partner as it should 

have been over the last 30 years, has driven the cost of 

photovoltaics down from $1.75 a kilowatt hour in 1977 to 25 cents 

a kilowatt hour today. We can drive that down further, and we 

would have been farther along this path if the Congress had persisted in overcoming President Reagan’s abolishing of the alternative energy program in 1981. 

But we are where we are, and we are determined to do our part 

in the greening of the Capital, in the greening of the Nation. This 

does not require an Apollo project, I would say to my colleagues. 

We don’t need to have a crash program to invent something new. 

17

The whole space program runs on photovoltaics. The Forest Service, the Park Service. NOAA has weather buoys that operate on 

photovoltaic cells. 

The U.S. Forest Service has monitoring stations in the wilderness areas and in the national forests, reporting on everything 

from precipitation to air temperature and moisture content in anticipation and prevention of forest fires. The Park Services has 

similar monitoring, all run by photovoltaics. 

We can run these buildings by photovoltaics. We are going to do 

it. 

I will cease for the moment. 

Ms. NORTON. I don’t know how the Chairman manages to know 

so much about so many subjects. All you have to do is sit in multiple Subcommittee hearings, and I just said to staff, I think he 

must not read novels. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. NORTON. He spends his time knowing everything there is 

about the subjects under our Committee. 

We are mostly dealing with basics here. You have heard the 

Chairman speak about where we could be with truly forward-looking technology, and you heard him say we are where we are. So 

let us begin with the basics. 

What buildings have done, what the Defense Department has 

done, what the District has done and what GSA has done is impressive because we didn’t know about it, because I think most of 

the world thinks nothing is being done. I think we would all agree 

that the time has probably come to quicken the pace. 

Let me ask you a basic question. Do you know what the temperature is in the buildings under your jurisdiction as I speak? Is there 

any mandate to what the temperature should be in the buildings 

that you have any jurisdiction over? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Madam Chair, we have in our P100 for our new 

buildings, the systems that we put in actually do dictate performance standards in terms of range of energy or rather energy temperature. 

In our current existing buildings in the NCR, we generally leave 

it at about 70. It is 68 to 72 is the range that we maintain most 

of the systems in NCR, most of our major Federal buildings. So 

that is essentially the monitor. When we were monitoring this 

building in the heat situations of two weeks ago, we were still trying to keep it at the 72 level. 

So that is essentially the benchmark that we have, and that is 

reflected both in the building operation direction for our property 

managers as well as with the design of new buildings in the systems to try to keep it at the 68 to 72 range. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Grone? 

Mr. GRONE. Madam Chair, for the Department of Defense, we 

have a similar range built into the operating procedures for the 

370,000 buildings that are in the DOD inventory. The services implement that through their installation management profiles. 

We are in a similar position to GSA. We have established corporate policy, department-wide policy in terms of guidance, and 

then the components will implement that and execute that at the 

base level, but it is a similar as Mr. Winstead described. 

18

Ms. NORTON. Did either of you? I know the buildings are not 

under your specific control, Ms. Walraven. 

Ms. WALRAVEN. I would just add that as an industry standard 

for commercial buildings, a range of 68 to 72 percent plus or minus 

2 percent, 2 degrees, is an industry standard, and most leases dictate that range. 

Mr. STANLEY. The District of Columbia does not currently have 

a mandate in place. However, we are convening an interagency 

task force within the government to look at this precise issue and 

using the leadership of both private industry and the Federal Government as guidance for what the applicable standards could be 

within the government. 

Ms. NORTON. I ask that question because what I think, well, let 

me go to the next question. 

It is pretty clear except for Mr. Grone’s testimony, where in a 

real sense you see the difference between how the military sector 

and how the civilian usually operate. When the military sector says 

you are supposed to do something, usually they say and this is who 

is supposed to see that it gets done. You know you are in the Army 

now or even in the military now. 

I noted in your testimony. I think yours was the only testimony 

where we heard specifics about who was delegated to do something. 

I think we looked in your testimony and some of what you said 

about the Army in particular, I remember. I don’t believe it was 

in your written testimony, but it seemed to be a paradigm for how 

to make sure that a policy is more than a policy. 

Would you elaborate on how you carry out the policy or at least 

how the Army has carried out the policy? Describe the policy you 

spoke of because we really want to focus not nearly so much on policy today—everybody knows what should be done—but on how it 

should be carried out. 

Mr. GRONE. Well, Madam Chair, it is a very important question 

because it gets to the heart of the matter about performance measures and performance standards. 

Ms. NORTON. A little closer into the microphone. 

Mr. GRONE. It gets to the heart of the question about performance measures and performance standards. We are not at the department-wide level establishing policy as we have previously, but 

the components as the Army has done and the other components 

as well are building. 

Ms. NORTON. You went out and you used to do it departmentwide. Why did you go to Army, Navy, et cetera? 

Mr. GRONE. I am sorry? 

Ms. NORTON. You say you don’t establish it department-wide and 

you used to. 

Mr. GRONE. Oh, we do. We have department-wide goals that are 

established. The components’—the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air 

Force—defense agencies are responsible for the implementation 

and execution and the achievement of those goals. 

Ms. NORTON. I see. 

Mr. GRONE. But where the Department is evolving, as I think 

many of our colleagues in our sister Federal agencies are evolving, 

is building those performance expectations into not just of the management plan of the organization but building it into the performVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:35 Feb 26, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\36796 HTRANS1 PsN: JASON
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ance standards and expectations for the command leadership, for 

the senior executives as well as the line staff that are implementing and carrying those out. So unifying what we expect of our 

people, building them around programs that are sustainable over 

time is critically important. 

One of the things that we do in my office is we have established 

a Defense Installations Strategic Plan. We are revising it for the 

third time since it was first established in 2004. It was the first 

occasion we had a Defense-wide strategic plan for the management 

of the Installations’ portfolio and a key component of that plan concerns energy demand management, generation of new and renewable sources and how we cascade that again down to the level of 

the individual person on the line, out in the field, how they would 

carry that out. 

The implementing guidelines, the change management communication, these are all things that all of us in this Federal agency 

are beginning to adopt, frankly, as many of our colleagues in private industry do, linking large strategy significant programs down 

to the individual. 

Ms. NORTON. The operative word for me was performance measures. That is to say if, in fact, in judging the performance of the 

Executive, energy conservation is included, you are more likely to 

have energy conservation achieved. 

Frankly, I wonder how the Federal Government achieved the 

savings it did. I suspect that the savings that were in my opening 

statement were not achieved by habits of workers or managers but 

by purchases, bulk purchases and the like. 

Mr. Winstead, for example, in Ms. Walraven’s testimony, she 

talks about janitorial best practices, and she says that janitorial 

staff is often ignored when developing energy savings. She has this 

astounding figure that they typically account for 25 percent of 

weekly lighting use or 7 percent of the total building use. 

Now, one thing you could do in putting our your RPF for janitors 

would be to incorporate performance standards for them. Does anything like that occur in the many janitorial contractors that are 

used by the Federal Government? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Madam Chair, I think the comment by the representative of BOMA is very much on target in your concern in 

that regard. As you know we have and I mentioned in my testimony, we have got energy coordinators in all the 11 regions, direct 

responsibility and accountability. 

Ms. NORTON. I don’t understand what an energy coordinator does 

or how that coordinator is incentivized or held accountable otherwise. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. They are held accountable. 

Ms. NORTON. How? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. There is a quarterly performance review by both 

the ARA and the region in terms of the operating, basically the 

performance of the building with the energy savings targets. 

On the contract issues, there are clauses. For example, a lot of 

our NCR buildings and major buildings and regions are managed 

through a contract by NISH. I have talked to Bob Chamberlain. He 

has annual conferences for training the managers of the cleaning 

crews and maintenance crews, and we are focused on that. We are 

20

going to be doing more with them to ensure that every action is 

taken to obviously ensure lights are turned out as quickly as cleaning is done in our buildings. 

Ms. NORTON. Would the RPF that you have to put out in order 

to do janitorial services, which you do all over the Country, is there 

or could there be points given for measures like janitorial best 

practices? I am looking for incentives, obviously. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Right. We do have clauses of maintenance contract and actually actions that are due. I will explore the issue of 

whether we could incentivize and account for savings. 

A lot of our buildings, as you well know, are multi-tenanted. It 

is a little bit more difficult in terms of figuring out what floor is 

being cleaned and whether lights were turned out per direction 

through the contract to the operation maintenance provider, but 

there may be more than we are currently doing. 

I would be happy to get the Committee a copy of the clauses in 

that contract and what we are doing in training with NISH to 

make sure that the contractors and the employees through NISH 

are actually doing it. I would be happy to get that to you. 

Ms. NORTON. In the statutory authority we are contemplating, 

we will be looking at what the Defense Department has done. Some 

of that is impressive because there are accountable people. We will 

be looking at incentives. 

We had Ms. Walraven here at the same time we had our government officials because the District of Columbia as well as Federal 

agencies often rent space, lease space. It does seem to me that 

there is a synergy there that is unavoidable. If you have a lease 

from the Federal Government, you have got something very valuable, and everybody knows it is very competitive. 

But I am not sure the extent to which that synergy works out 

in best practices. What we are going to require in our statute is 

best practices, and we are going to take those best practices essentially from the kinds of things we heard that the Defense Department is doing with performance measures and from what the private sector is doing. 

What I want to know is what kind of collaboration, given the fact 

that you lease almost as much space as you own. I am not sure if 

that is the case with the Defense Department, but I ask you this 

question and Mr. Stanley this question as well. Why isn’t everybody in the same room, saying, hey, guess what, this is what we 

are requiring of every Federal building manager; therefore, this is 

required of you if you want this contract, period? 

We could change the world out there as well as the world that 

we live in. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, we do use. I mean Phil and I, in terms of 

how we exchange best practices in this regard, we are on a level. 

Ms. NORTON. What do you do? Tell me the nature of the collaboration. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, we work closely together in exchanging best 

practices, and BOMA is obviously very much involved in this. We 

have training with BOMA. We look at their standards in terms of 

energy savings and operating techniques. 

As I mentioned, in these clauses, our contract clauses, both have 

facility standards in lighting control. These are for the vendors that 

21

are operating the buildings. Mechanical and engineering operation, 

there are contract clauses dealing with that. So we do have within 

our contracts, requirements for our contractors to take these actions and to control and turn off lights and to save energy. 

Ms. NORTON. Suppose they don’t do it. Do you know whether 

they do it. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, we do. 

Ms. NORTON. I live in Washington, so I go downtown and I see 

lights on all the time. It just kills me just because I wonder. Like 

I said, I hope those people are working late, but then I have my 

doubts. 

I am not criticizing what you are doing. I am suggesting that 

nothing happens automatically. As the Ranking Member said, some 

of us were brought up so that you were supposed to turn the light 

out when you leave the room, and it is still a habit that you turn 

it out. 

But that is not the case, I think, for the average American, and 

if it is not the case for the average American unless somebody is 

held responsible, we do not believe it will happen. 

My guess is that much of the savings, admirable savings that 

have occurred have not occurred because of delegated responsibility 

to make something happen but because of top management’s ways 

of buying energy and of bringing pressure at that level on energy 

costs as opposed to bringing pressure also at the level. 

Now I could be wrong, but I haven’t heard much about how 

somebody is responsible, how somebody gets a bonus, how somebody gets his performance rating affected except somewhat from, of 

course, from the Department depending on which part of the military we are talking about. So what we are looking for is ideas rather than criticism. 

I am going to go to Mrs. Capito and come back again after she 

does some of her questions. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I have a question. I know that all the buildings that all four of 

you deal with on a daily basis, a lot of them are very old and poorly 

insulated, poorly lit maybe in some occasions, maybe even poorly 

wired because of the age, using older technologies or just the fact 

they are just plain worn out. That has got to present really difficult 

challenges in terms of energy conservation. 

Mr. Winstead mentioned a new building. I believe you said it 

was a new building that was being built in San Francisco. That is 

a new construction, correct, and that holds such promise, I think, 

for energy conservation. We know so much more now about the 

technologies of conserving and balancing need with down times and 

up times. 

What kind of solutions have you worked on in terms of meeting 

the challenges of older construction, older buildings that you might 

be able to share not only with us but with others in the group? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Sure. Congresswoman Capito, as you mentioned, 

a large part of our inventory is older buildings even though a lot 

of the new courthouses, some 22 courthouses have been since 1995 

basically. A large part of what we are doing, we are investing about $407 

million if you look at the total renovation program from 1990 to 

22

2007. In five buildings that we have analyzed that were renovated 

with new systems, new efficient energy systems between 2000 and 

2003, we have seen an average reduction of about 18 percent in 

consumption. The totals per building have ranged from 3 percent 

to about 40 percent. 

So what we have continued to do is to apply those new systems 

that are available, whether they are HVAC systems or new lighting 

systems we talked about earlier, into those structures to get better 

performance out of them. A large part in our three budget line 

items is obviously direct appropriation for retrofit, but the R and 

A, renovation and alteration, and the minor R and A projects that 

we have in renovation is where a lot of that investment is occurring through those line item programs. 

What we have seen in our buildings, for example, in Waltham, 

Massachusetts, where we have a storage facility for NARA and 

their record-keeping is we have actually put a new roof on the 

building which has a rubberized solar panel so the entire roof is 

solar. It is not just a singular series of solar panels. The reduction 

of energy, I think, from that installation alone is in the neighborhood of 20 percent. 

So that is the kind of actions that we are taking across as well 

as building these new courthouses and new Federal office buildings 

and the new border station, even the one we are now underway 

with. A new border station in North Dakota has taken advantage 

of the alignment of the building with sun and basically the configuration of the heavy winds. The back side of the building is beveled. 

Basically in the cold it will divert these cold winds coming through 

that part. So we are very active. 

The one thing that I would mention to this Committee is at a recent meeting of BOMA with the National Advisory Council that I 

was present, GSA as a participant. I think part of what 

incentivizes, and Chairman Oberstar alluded to this, what is 

incentivizing the possibilities here now is the private sector is finally really alive and engaged. 

If you look back at the Green Building Council which has biannual meetings, about four years ago, they were tracking about 

3,000 participants. This is both public and private building owners 

and vendors of energy systems in buildings. Now, 13,000 people are 

attending. 

Obviously, the actions of the District and Montgomery County 

and Arlington and NCR demanding LEEDs buildings and recertification and renovation of buildings is really driving better technology, better costs recovery and life cycle costs of these facilities. 

I would mention in my testimony just to show you the payback 

period. It used to be 10 to 15 years ago, that we were looking at 

10 or 15 years payback on new HVAC systems or lighting, new 

lighting or glazing of windows. Now we are looking to an average 

of 6 years recovery for a lot of these retrofitted energy systems that 

we are putting into buildings. So we are seeing our payback shorten which is incentivizing both our ability to renovate buildings as 

well as the public to develop new technologies. 

Mr. GRONE. For the Department, certainly you hit on one of the 

key points which is the age of the inventory. When I joined the Department after leaving the House Armed Services Committee in 

23

2001, I took a look at the state of the inventory. The average age 

of a building in the Department’s inventory dated to the Eisenhower Administration, and the average age of a military family 

housing unit dated to the Truman Administration. So we certainly 

had exactly the issue you describe across the breadth of the portfolio. 

Our approach is one coming out of the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense that is very much a portfolio management approach. What 

we have tried to do, what we are doing is establishing broad performance expectations for the portfolio, building models that are 

benchmarked to private sector and best practices in the public sector that understand how we should be maintaining and operating 

our assets, how we should think about the recapitalization of those 

assets, aggressively demolishing assets we no longer require, looking at those older assets for their potential benefit as adaptive 

reuse. 

What we find in many cases is that a well sustained older facility 

has many of the attributes of energy conservation that we are actually looking for. Carefully balancing within the portfolio, what is 

the mission requirement to the asset and bringing those up to some 

sense of contemporary standards, we can get an enormous amount 

of efficiency. 

But what we have not tried to do is specifically dictate a military 

specification out of my office down to the components to be implemented across the nearly 400,000 built assets to say you can only 

do X with an installation. 

We have tried to be very careful about performance expectations, 

be specific with standards where they are benchmarked to private 

sector practice, and then in working with our private sector partners and our interagency partners have those aggressively implemented across the enterprise. 

Ms. WALRAVEN. I wanted to specifically address on the private 

sector side the financial impact is a huge motivator and performance metric which is why our industry is keenly focused on the impact of energy because it can be 20 percent of total costs of operating a building and as much as a third of variable costs or those 

costs which you can truly control. 

In fact, I would also comment that as it relates to most GSA 

leased structures, we are limited in our ability to increase rent over 

CPI type of increases such that we have an incentive to manage 

all costs but particularly energy because it is such a huge component because we won’t get that recovered from the GSA. So that 

is in those leased environments that you asked about, Madam 

Chair, is a way to address and make sure that we are getting what 

the Federal Government expects. 

I would also highlight that education and outreach is absolutely 

key. To your point on this old buildings versus new buildings, actually EIA, the Energy Information Association, did a study—I believe it was in 2003—that looked at the poorest performance buildings in the CBECS database which is what ENERGY STAR is 

based on, and they also looked at the age of those buildings. 

What was interesting is that age was not the strongest correlator 

for performance and, in fact, the bottom 25 percent performers 

often had state of the art equipment including 76 percent had 

24

economizer systems, 56 percent had energy management systems, 

45 percent had variable speed drives. 

So a big majority of these buildings had state of the art equipment, and the age was not the biggest determinant which really 

supported this point and which is where BOMA’s energy efficiency 

program or BEEP really focused on the low and no cost ways to 

really improve performance because you can build a LEED-certified 

top of the line building, but if you don’t operate it correctly and 

benchmark it on ENERGY STAR and really manage that performance, it is not going to perform well. 

We see in the GSA stuff that we deal with there is a company 

at USAA that it is regularly part of the performance that you will 

have an ENERGY STAR rating, that you will seek a label, that you 

will LEED certify. I can assure you we are living to live up to those 

standards. 

Mr. STANLEY. The District of Columbia Government has a multiprong strategy for addressing energy consumption in old buildings. 

I think the highlight of our strategy is the Green Buildings Act. 

While a strong focus of the Green Buildings Act is on new construction, there is a portion of the Green Buildings Act that focuses 

on significantly renovated public buildings. By that, I mean buildings that are owned and operated or receive a significant portion 

of funding from the Government of the District of Columbia, and 

so when there is an instance of significant renovation in a D.C. 

Government building, starting with the new fiscal year 2008, they 

will be required to meet LEED standards. 

This, I think, demonstrates strong leadership, quite frankly nationally. We are very proud of that. We are also working on making 

sure that there are strong incentives, not just for government agencies but also for the private sector as it relates to the Green Building Act moving forward. 

The second, I think, piece of our multi-prong strategy is conducting audits of all the government buildings that D.C. owns and 

operates to do a baseline assessment of where we stand right now 

with respect to energy consumption. 

I think the follow-up to that is to do some retrofitting of buildings that may not necessarily require a significant renovation but 

probably could stand to use some retrofitting as it relates to energy 

consumption. One of the aspects of that may be working with private companies to come in and do some retrofitting of some of the 

equipment and devices that exist in buildings to enhance our energy consumption because we believe that even a small investment 

can yield long term benefits with respect to existing buildings. 

Then the last piece of our multi-prong strategy is training, and 

I think you have heard of that from a number of my colleagues that 

are here on the panel as well. I think that we want to make sure 

that every single facility manager within the District of Columbia 

Government is properly trained in basic strategies are making 

their buildings much more energy efficient. 

Some of them are very small things such as, again, making sure 

that computers and lights are turned off. Others are making sure 

that we have high performance cooling and heating systems as 

well. The combination of those strategies, I think, will help significantly. 

25

Then I guess the final piece is also what I mentioned before, and 

that is taking a look at some demand response initiatives to make 

sure that during peak electricity demand time such as during the 

summer that existing old buildings have an opportunity to demonstrate reduced energy consumption as well. 

Mrs. CAPITO. I thank you all. I date back to the Eisenhower era. 

I am glad to know age is not necessarily the prohibiting factor to 

efficiency. I appreciate your insights. 

I have to leave to go to another meeting. 

I think the training aspect or the awareness aspect in this Country, for some reason in the seventies this was a big push, and I am 

sure a lot of you all were around. With Jimmy Carter, we were in 

gas lines. We were becoming very aware of how much energy we 

were using both as individuals and how much we were using in our 

cars and our homes. 

I remember at one point, actually when my dad was Governor of 

the State of West Virginia, he turned off the lights. Conservation 

was becoming a word that we all understood, and we knew how to 

practice it. We got so far away from that. 

I think if people realized the statistics that you have just brought 

forward to us with the practices that you have in place and that 

I am sure you are going to be increasing upon, how much of an impact just small and low cost and real free behavior modifications 

can make, it can really save us all in the long run. 

I hope that in conjunction with what you are doing—I think you 

are doing a lot of great work—that just as a basic citizenry, that 

we can, and I think we are, raise our awareness and make all of 

us aware that little things go a long way. So I appreciate everything. 

Sorry, Madam Chair, I have to move out for an 11:30. It is all 

your hands, very capable hands. Thanks for bringing the sun in. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mrs. Capito. 

Just a few more questions because we are trying to cross-fertilize 

here between the military, our own civilian programs and, of 

course, the private and public sectors. 

In your testimony, Mr. Grone, you spoke about and you indicated 

what is clear, that if you use energy saving approaches, that will 

be a higher cost than if you use conventional approaches if you are 

doing building. You do a lot of building military housing, bases. I 

mean you do a huge amount of building. 

GSA does some, does less. We are just about to pass out an appropriation, probably the largest in history for GSA to build not 

just one building but a whole set of buildings on the old St. Elizabeth’s campus. 

Now to what extent is our expectation that new methods of construction, taking into account energy costs, to what extent is that 

a pipedream because of the way in which appropriations occur and 

the amount of money you have to build dictates construction? 

Are you able, in other words, to face the future as you get opportunities to build new buildings of various kinds? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Madam Chair, clearly, as I mentioned in my testimony, the standards that we are putting in the P100. We have 

revised the P100 standard to both comply with the EP Act 2005 

and the executive order. It basically is including requirements 

26

across the board that each building uses about 30 percent less energy, and that is published in the actual standard so that we are 

actually going below the benchmarks. As BOMA mentioned, most 

of our buildings are now benchmarked to BOMA standards as well. 

In the new construction, with the American Society of Heating, 

Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, we are actually, in new materials and construction techniques and systems in place, getting 

about 30 percent less energy in those new buildings. 

I know that you have watched. 

Ms. NORTON. You are able to take into account as you build the 

new Coast Guard headquarters, that if you do X, you will save the 

Government energy over, let us say, the next 10 years rather than 

doing Y. You are able to do that? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, Madam Chair. 

What I think we see in this chart that is in my testimony about 

average new systems, be it materials like glazing or high efficiency 

glass or lighting, what has happened now for the first time is we 

are really seeing a matrix of return, the data that allow us to understand what the Government is investing in this. A decade ago 

investing in a green roof, you really couldn’t define to the degree 

that we can now. There is a lot out there, and we are able to document returns. 

What I am very pleased about is I mentioned earlier at this very 

recent meeting through BOMA, this National Advisory Council. 

They actually are looking at financial returns. As we approach St. 

Elizabeth’s and the new headquarters, we will be able to actually 

understand what the return in energy savings and to the taxpayer 

is for the new systems we put in that headquarters building. 

I know you are very interested. We spent a lot of public money 

over the last 15 years on the courthouses, so we did a little extra 

work. We looked. You know we have over 300 courthouses in our 

inventory. Over 50 have been built under design excellence since 

1992. We are actually seeing about 6 percent lower consumption in 

these courthouses. 

Now, as you know, they are not as heavily populated. There is 

not as much going on per day as a Federal office building, a multitenanted Federal office building, and the atriums are not consuming as much energy as public spaces. But we looking at operating hours differential in the courthouses and we are looking at 

the thermostat controls in the courtrooms that are not being utilized in a day and turning them down. So we are taking action 

with a lot of the newer buildings that have been coming into our 

inventory. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Grone? 

Mr. GRONE. Madam Chair, the Department is in a position now 

where we talk about the age of our facilities. We are in a position 

now where we are undertaking a most significant recapitalization 

of our military infrastructure since in the last 50 years, taking account all of the construction investments that are being made 

through base realignment and closure activities, repositioning the 

force globally, growing the Army and Marine Corps, the work that 

is being done with our private sector partners in military housing 

privatization. 

27

The budget that we have sent to the Congress for consideration this year has roughly a $20 billion construction program for fiscal 

year 2008. As we implement that construction program, many of 

the attributes that Commissioner Winstead discussed in terms of 

how we think about those assets, how they ought to be designed 

for the future are things that we are layering into that massive recapitalization activity of the Department. 

But there is one aspect of the energy conservation question that 

we really haven’t touched on which is for this Department a critically important aspect of it. Our friends at GSA have the benefit 

of managing largely singular assets that stand, in many cases, 

alone, largely outside a secure fence in the community, and they 

are largely responding to energy demand reduction goals that occur 

within the four walls of that singular asset. 

The Department, obviously in managing military installations, 

most of our assets are behind the fence in a secure environment 

with very heavy energy demand pulls. 

Ms. NORTON. No, no. Let us not give you an advantage over Mr. 

Winstead. You are on your own turf, setting your own terms. 

Mr. GRONE. It does with this exception. The aspect of the problem that we haven’t talked about is what happens outside those 

four walls. We have a recapitalization plant value for the entire enterprise of $710 billion based on our current estimates. Our utility 

infrastructure alone is $69 billion and within that $69 billion. 

Ms. NORTON. Do you provide your own utilities? 

Mr. GRONE. No. It is the plant replacement value of the distribution systems on the installations. When the power comes in at the 

main point of the fence at most installations, that power distributes 

across the system. Much of that, we own ourselves, and that plant 

value is about $25 billion for electric power alone. 

So as we look at the challenges of energy conservation for this 

Department, it is not just what occurs inside the building, but it 

is the distribution system that brings the power to that building, 

modernized, efficient and effective. 

When we looked at that challenge several years ago, there was 

a Department of Navy sort of catch phrase that people would use. 

The problem with our systems was that they squeak, they leak and 

they are past their peak. 

They are older, antiquated and need significant modernization, 

and with that we are meeting our energy conservation goals, but 

we also need to be very mindful of the distribution systems and the 

feeder systems. 

Also, frankly, up until just recently, we did not set about when 

we built new construction. We are doing this now, but when we did 

a new construction, we did not individually meter buildings. 

Ms. NORTON. You did not what? I am sorry. 

Mr. GRONE. We did not individually meter buildings. So the only 

place we had was the initial point of entry to tell us how much 

power we were using at Fort Carson, but we had very great difficulty understanding that on a per asset basis. We are getting to 

that understanding now. 

Ms. NORTON. You are metering then all your buildings? 

Mr. GRONE. We are putting in place the process to individually 

meter our assets, individual assets. 

28

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Winstead, are your buildings metered? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. We do. That is a requirement. We are. In the 

older ones we are retrofitting, we are metering our buildings, and 

that is part of what I was demonstrating. 

Ms. NORTON. Is that minimally necessary? 

Mr. GRONE. Sorry. 

Ms. NORTON. To hold anybody accountable, is that minimally 

necessary? 

Mr. GRONE. Yes, yes, absolutely. 

Ms. NORTON. I can understand why it didn’t happen before. So 

this is being done throughout your inventory. 

Mr. GRONE. Yes. Yes, but my point in raising it was to emphasize that while we are very focused inside the actual constructed 

asset for the Department of Defense, I don’t want to speak for DOE 

but for any of us at large that manage for the taxpayer and the 

Government, large installation complexes, the distribution systems 

as important a consideration in the equation as what happens inside the actual built asset itself. It is something that we have to 

pay attention to and we are paying attention. 

Ms. NORTON. Of course, that would be huge capital costs to go 

about modernizing the systems themselves. 

What was so intriguing about Ms. Walraven said is how they 

have to compete in order to lease from the Federal Government 

and have to be below a certain CPI. Therefore, in a real sense, they 

have no place else to go but energy savings and other savings that 

they can effect in order to compete to get this very valuable thing 

called a Federal lease. That is built-in. This is like the beauty the 

private sector. 

What I am looking for are incentives in the public sector. The 

public sector does not have built-in incentives. It does not have a 

bottom line. People who would turn off the lights and turn off their 

own computers won’t think a thing about not doing it in the workplace. 

I have to say to my staff when I go into these little kitchens, this 

is a messy place. Would you keep your own kitchen like this? Of 

course not but since it is shared and somebody else is paying for 

it. 

I would like to know what, if any, incentives. I am talking about 

anything from bonuses. We heard about performance. That is a 

great incentive, of course, if it has meaning. A certain percentage 

of your performance shall be. I mean GSA knows how to do points 

when somebody wants to compete for a lease. The Federal Government does performance measures. 

I wonder if there is any manager who has as a part of her performance measures a specific amount of that performance measure 

that is energy-related, however that is defined in the Federal Government today. Does anybody know of anybody? 

The Army, we already learned that the military holds people accountable, but I would like to know about specifics. You know how 

you will be rewarded based on very specific old-fashioned ways of 

supervising people. This is a fairly new way. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Madam Chair, I will be happy to get you, because 

as I mentioned on the regional, our property managers on the regional level are, in fact, under the quarterly review, the biannual 

29

review and end of the year review, actually performance standards 

are operating these buildings, ensuring that they are communicating to the tenants for energy conservation action. They are accountable for that in their performance measure. 

I will be happy to get you a copy. 

Ms. NORTON. They are accountable for what? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. For actually implementing and tracking and encouraging both in terms of operating. 

Ms. NORTON. You see, that is what I don’t understand. Of course, 

they are. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. But how is that measured? When it comes time to 

rate their performance, how is that incorporated into their own performance which can decide if they have a bonus, which can decide 

whether they get promoted and the like? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, Madam Chair, it is a part of linking budget 

to performance appraisal that is in place now. Their actions in compliance with both the standard reflected in their performance plan 

and obviously the operating and maintenance standards of our 

buildings, they are incentivized through a bonus system through 

linking budget to performance. 

We are essentially evaluating performance of property managers 

based upon their adherence to our energy operational principles 

and obviously communication and working with tenants to have 

them mirror those actions. So we do have one in place, and I would 

be happy to share with you without a name attached but a traditional performance which is done ever year for every major property manager responsible for that. 

I will be happy to get that to the Committee, and I will also go 

back to our chief people officer and find out if there is more we can 

do in that regard, if there are more ways. 

Ms. NORTON. I appreciate it. 

For example, Mr. Grone, I am just trying to make those of us 

who live in the average real world understand. 

Suppose you have a base commander. Now I know the Army 

measures these guys in very specific ways. A base commander who 

is in charge of—I don’t know—let us say Bolling Air Force Base, 

is part of the way he is evaluated as a base commander have anything to do with energy conservation and consumption, any guidance? 

Mr. GRONE. Yes. I would request that I get a more detailed answer for you for the record. 

[Information follows:]

30


36796.004
31

Mr. GRONE. As I indicated in my opening statement, the Army 

for installation commanders is building exactly that profile into 

their requirements. The Secretary of the Air Force has made energy demand management and energy issues a key component of 

the Air Force leadership requirement. 

How each of the components are building that into performance 

expectations particularly for the military staff, the command element, as well as for senior executives who are charged with implementing and achieving the goals and objectives, I would prefer to 

get that for you on a more detailed basis. 

Ms. NORTON. I wish you would. I understand that these questions are very specific. The reason we are asking such specific questions, recognizing that you do not have all of this at your fingertips, 

is that when we codify something, we want to codify something 

from real life. Some of what you are saying suggests that real life 

exists here, and if we would only spread it, we could do it. 

The things that I am asking, if you could get it to us within 30 

days, we would very much appreciate it because we are working on 

statutory guidance. 

I notice that Mr. Stanley in his testimony said something that 

was related to one of my earlier questions. He talked about the 

Green Building Act of 2005 which established legislation to create 

and here he says a task force of green building experts, environmental advocates, government representatives and industry experts. 

That is really what I was getting at when I said what kind of 

collaboration exists between the public sector and the private sector which has its own incentives because it has a bottom line. Is 

there any such thing as the District of Columbia task force? 

Let us get everybody around the table. Does any such task force 

operate on a continuing basis to advise the Federal sector? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, Madam Chair, there are a number. 

First of all, I think GSA is the largest member of BOMA, the private sector. In terms of the District, I know NCR is engaged regularly, not only with their actions on green building initiatives 

which is wonderful in terms of incentivizing the private sector, but 

we actually use BOMA training which is both public and private 

participants in the management institute at BOMA. So I know that 

we are doing a lot. 

I would also mention that on the Federal level, we have a lot of 

new. 

Ms. NORTON. Are any of the Defense Department sectors involved in this BOMA since you have office buildings and other 

buildings as well? I know you have habitats. You have something 

very different, but you also have the same things that GSA has. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Right, Madam Chair. The one thing I did want 

to mention. Federal agencies now have the Federal Property Council. There is also a non-profit group that is out there that caucuses 

an annual lunch for both service providers and Federal agency and 

real estate directors, but under the Federal Property Council, we 

are working closely on building performance standard sharing. 

As you know, a lot of the action in the last five years has been 

looking at our owned inventory, the 40 year plus buildings that are 

our average age, and figuring out how we can share experiences 

32

not just in energy performance and building operations, but as you 

know we are excising our portfolio. 

Just as Phil mentioned, we are actually disposing. We now have 

tiered our assets and those that are under-performing for energy 

reasons, for revenue, not achieving a 6 percent return which is our 

return on investment, we are disposing of those now. Even though 

it is an old inventory on average, we are actually disposing of the 

tier three properties and getting more efficient buildings by doing 

so and then adding everything we have been talking about. 

But we are sharing a lot of this through the Federal Property 

Council. 

Ms. NORTON. The Federal Property Council, I am aware of, and 

I think it is a very important and good thing. 

Let me reflect the bias I have in favor of the private sector. The 

private sector has incentives to get there and to get to places that 

the public sector does not. 

When I speak about Mr. Stanley’s testimony, I am really talking 

about prodding for best practices in a continuing way, and I believe 

that prodding has to come from the private sector. I just believe the 

people who have to do it as a bottom line continually sitting with 

people who don’t have to do it as a bottom line will help us all, particularly since we share many of these private facilities in the first 

place. 

I understand these large organizations. I understand they break 

down into smaller groups that are helpful. I am saying that the 

best practices in this field are changing so quickly that unless 

there is some continuous feedback from the people who have to 

both live within a bottom line and to improve, I do not have confidence—I who love government—that the government will in fact 

move as well or as quickly as the private sector. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. We will try to take your charge and even be more 

engaged. 

I would just like to conclude. Maybe Phil has got some thoughts. 

There are three groups that I understand. There is the U.S. 

Green Building Council that I have actually been engaged. There 

is also an interagency energy management group that meets four 

times a year in an interagency sustainability working group. So we 

do have the structure. 

Ms. NORTON. That is within the government. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, but the U.S. Green Building Council. 

Ms. NORTON. I applaud that. I applaud that, but you just heard 

me express greater confidence in people who have to save money 

but still have to make improvements, and that is really the private 

sector. Therefore, I would be much more interested in the BOMA 

configurations keeping the Federal Government informed of what 

it is doing in its buildings in order to meet the lease requirements 

of the Federal Government. 

I have no sense that there is anybody sitting over here who feels, 

here where we are sitting, who feels the same compunction to save 

money and to improve that somebody who has the bottom line 

does. It is just the nature of the beast. Therefore, I want to get in 

there with the beast who does have that to contend with and have 

greater cross-fertilization the way the District does. 

33

The District sits down here. Who is ahead in the District with 

the green building? 

It is the private sector. We now have private sector people saying 

my condo is a LEED condo. They tell us that, yes, there is a value 

added and there is expense added, but they also have found out 

that when people want to invest in a condo, that they will do so 

and they can be sold on that. 

I want to hear more from people who are making money on putting up condos where people are willing to pay more for a LEED 

condo than for one that is not. I want to hear from those people 

because I think they know more than I do sitting in the Federal 

sector where I don’t have that pressure. That is why I am pressing 

for that kind of close collaboration on a continuing basis, not four 

times a week when we all meet and then boast about what we have 

all done. 

If anything, I have more faith in the Federal sector, Mr. Grone, 

because it is a command structure. When they say do something, 

it must be done as a matter of military discipline. Go ahead, sir. 

Mr. GRONE. Madam Chair, we are all, GSA, the Department of 

Energy, we in the Department with BOMA, we all participate in 

the National Institute of Building Sciences, for example, looking at 

how to define high performance buildings. 

As I indicated earlier, we constantly strive to benchmark our 

practices for our cost and management models which 10 years ago 

did not exist. We have come an enormous way in the last 10 years 

in the Department of Defense in understanding what it means to 

sustain and recapitalize our asset base, and we do not do that simply by looking at what did it cost us last year to run the enterprise. 

We constantly go out and check against the best costing and management practices to build those into our budget and programming 

process to try to understand what does it take. 

Now we don’t, in a risk-based judgment, always fulfill that obligation to 100 percent, but we understand where we are taking risk. 

That is part of the process that we are trying to build. 

The question of the bottom line is very important to us. Do we 

think about it in exactly the same terms? No, but for this Department, the business of installation is a $56 billion business as represented by the President’s budget this year. Everything from services to environmental remediation to construction activity to operations and maintenance, it is a $56 billion enterprise. 

The objective of improving the military capability and readiness 

of those assets, improving their efficiency, returns funds to the bottom line that can then be put on people, on training, on military 

readiness, on procurement. 

Ms. NORTON. But does it? When you say funds, it goes to the 

Treasury. 

Mr. GRONE. No. Our ability to avoid costs in the future, our ability to have a more efficient, more effective, better asset base that 

is managed, to the extent that we can reduce our total operating 

costs, those are funds that we can then in subsequent budgets put 

to better effect on military readiness. For us, the bottom line, it is 

not the bottom of a P and L sheet, a profit and loss statement, but 

it is the ability to return funds to the warfighter for readiness purposes. 

34

Reducing the total operating costs of that support infrastructure, that $56 billion enterprise, making it more efficient, the motivator 

for us is more efficient, more effective facilities that can deliver 

military readiness for the warfighter. As we are looking for areas 

where we can save funds, make ourselves more efficient, we are 

doing it with that objective. It is a different objective than a private 

sector enterprise has, but it is an objective nonetheless, and it is 

one we take very seriously. 

Ms. NORTON. It is an important objective. There is a difference 

in kind, but it is important. 

Mr. GRONE. I think it is important for the Subcommittee to understand why, what motivates our management model, and that is 

in large measure what motivates our management model. 

Ms. NORTON. Why is it that GSA and the Defense Logistics 

Agency are continually apparently, according to our investigation, 

to supply Federal customers with inefficient as well as efficient energy-using products? I mean both are happening. 

What determines whether you purchase an efficient energy-using 

product for your customers or an inefficient one? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, Madam Chair, both at GSA on the FAS side 

as well as the PBS side—obviously, I have mentioned mostly on the 

building side—but FAS, I know that there have been some issues 

in some of the products in terms of their energy sustainability. 

Ms. NORTON. Is there a cost matter? Do you always buy energy 

efficient products for your customers? Our information is that is 

not the case. 

All we are trying to find out is what determines it. Is it budgetary? Who gets to make these decisions? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, from the standpoint of the client, on the 

FAS obviously, the purchase of scheduled cleaning equipment and 

materials, actually that decision is a client-driven decision. 

Ms. NORTON. That is my point. Clients don’t know anything. Clients, obviously, will look to GSA for guidance. Clients will come in 

and say, I need X, Y, Z equipment. They only know the kind of 

equipment they have now. 

Unless somebody who knows the state of the art says, but that 

is not the most energy efficient equipment, therefore we recommend this other equipment, he is going to continue to order 

whatever he has got at hand. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Right. It is my understand, Madam Chair, that 

we are, in fact, changing the schedules and putting the ENERGY 

STAR products up at the top. So that is something that is underway. 

Ms. NORTON. So why are the others on it at all, sir? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Well, I think they are on it because of the vendors obviously getting on FAS schedules and wanting to market 

their products. 

Ms. NORTON. What does that have to do with us if we are supposed to be buying ENERGY STAR products? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. I understand totally. I mean we are trying to 

move the sustainable energy-sensitive products, and that is my understanding of what we are doing on the FAS side. We are moving. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Grone, at least that is our understanding, that 

both kinds are there. If you can have your druthers and you don’t 

35

have any information, then you may end up choosing. You, the client. You, the customer. We are all one big happy Federal Government on the taxpayer dollar choosing the energy inefficient. 

You may do it for the same reason you do it if you go to buy 

something at a store. You say, oh, well, that looks like it is cheaper, so why don’t I buy that? 

Why should we have on any list anything but ENERGY STAR 

equipment? 

Mr. GRONE. Well, Madam Chair, the Defense Logistics Agency 

doesn’t come under my direct purview. What I would like to do is 

go back and consult with General Dail, the Director of DLA, and 

then come back and provide information for the record or a briefing 

to staff or to yourself about we think about that and how they 

manage it. 

Ms. NORTON. I would appreciate it. 

Mr. GRONE. I would be perfectly happy to go back and consult 

with General Dail and bring that forward to you. 

Ms. NORTON. I very much appreciate receiving that information 

within 30 days. Remember, we are trying to use your own practices 

in developing practices here. 

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Mr. WINSTEAD. I will get you a list, Madam Chair, of those products. 

Ms. NORTON. Say that again, Mr. Winstead. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. The products, the ENERGY STAR and energysensitive products, I will get to you a list of how we are pushing 

them up in the head of this. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes, and would you get to me an understanding of 

why any other products are on the list? Is there a big difference 

in cost or something? 

Now you have testified here about what the savings is. So I don’t 

know why the others wouldn’t say, guess what, unless you get to 

be like these ENERGY STAR people, you have no preference to be 

on our list. 

That is a very valuable list to be on. How do you get on the list 

especially given that is what the guidelines and what the Executive 

Order says you are supposed to do? 

How can we have a policy to use ENERGY STAR and yet you 

can get on the GSA list? I am not sure about the Defense Logistics 

Agency except our information is that both have both kinds on the 

list 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Again, this is something we are now focusing on. 

David Bibb, our Administrator, is looking at it. My understanding 

is within the next four months we are going to have them, and I 

will get back to your question of how the other products end up on 

the schedule. I mean I assume it is some contract. 

Ms. NORTON. Would you within 30 days tell us? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Sure. 

Ms. NORTON. Give us any reason other products should be on it. 

Now, here, let me help you out. The only reason I can think of 

is you have got some old something here, if you have got some old 

piece of equipment that will only take a non-ENERGY STAR piece 

of equipment. I didn’t think it worked that way, but maybe that 

is why you have to have the other on the list. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, replacement parts for older equipment would 

be the case. 

Mr. GRONE. Or in some cases, Madam Chair, there may be other 

performance criteria that can only be satisfied conceivably by a 

product that is less energy-efficient. So it would be a balancing 

question. 

Ms. NORTON. What would that be? Give me an example of what 

that would be? 

Mr. GRONE. There could be a militarily unique product, that performance characteristics are either in terms of power delivered or 

whatever. 

Ms. NORTON. That is interesting because I always thought that 

the ENERGY STAR also improved performance. 

Mr. GRONE. If you are looking at the question narrowly as a 

question of energy consumption and the product from that perspective, that will lead you perhaps to that conclusion. But there may 

be occasionally products, and we will go back and take a look at 

this to see if we can illuminate on it, but there will be occasionally 

products where other performance characteristics are more important in terms of a mission delivery or a capability than that. 

[Information follows:]

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Mr. GRONE. That said, we are trying to, as a Department, across 

the tactical and non-tactical areas do everything we can to embed 

energy efficiency into the method of getting that improved performance, so we can get to the objective that you have described, but 

in terms of the existing list, that could be one of the answers. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Winstead, on page 17 of your testimony, you 

mention something that seems to be at odds with some of your answers here. You say, you talk about needing flexibility in capital 

projects to incorporate energy savings technology that was not included in the design at the time the prospectus was submitted. 

I thought you said that you are incorporating these matters. I 

would expect that to be in the prospectus. Do you mean you perhaps have to come back and what do you mean by flexibility? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. I think flexibility in terms of the various options 

and systems. The P100 sets the standards for performance in new 

buildings, but I think the flexibility is how do we address that. Obviously, climate matters. In San Francisco, you can have an unairconditioned/heated building. In Washington, you obviously have to 

have both. 

Ms. NORTON. Because if you need the flexibility, you are talking 

to the Subcommittee that would be prepared to build that flexibility into prospectuses if you can show that there would be energy 

savings results. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. That is correct and whether there was some new 

technology after the submittal as well. I mean is there something 

more efficient than what was originally scoped out. 

Ms. NORTON. Within 30 days, please get us information on how 

we can make sure the prospectuses are not behind the time because you do submit a prospectus. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Okay. 

Ms. NORTON. I don’t know. You submit a prospectus for the new 

headquarters. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Right. 

Ms. NORTON. For the DHS, the Coast Guard, that must have 

been five years ago. Anyway, it was a long time ago. We certainly 

wouldn’t want to be frozen in time if all it took were some changes 

in the prospectus or, in the alternative, building in some flexibility. 

I would like to ask you about so-called delegated buildings, buildings that you don’t manage, but you delegate it to the agency. 

What do you do to assure that these buildings, which are completely under the management of the agency, are not dealing with 

energy consumption above the benchmark? What do you do if they 

are? 

How do you monitor such delegated buildings? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Actually, both in terms of our delegation when 

we do delegate, in Washington, NCR has a lot of single tenant delegated buildings, much more so than any place else in our portfolio. 

Within those delegations, there are guidelines to the standard operating procedures that ensure that they are following energy management and conservation plans to achieve the Federal mandates 

in the new bill, both the executive order and the energy policy. 

Ms. NORTON. How do make sure it happens? What is the enforcement mechanism? You have given it over to the agency. 

40

Mr. WINSTEAD. Right. We do require the delegated agencies to be 

accountable for what they have done under the implemented guidelines; also, the Department of Energy. 

Ms. NORTON. How often do they report back? You see I am looking for mechanisms that are above policy. The policies are in place. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. They report back annually. 

Madam Chair, you are well aware, I think, that the GAO recently did a review of delegated buildings, and we are now tightening up our review overall of performance under our delegations 

to our GSA standards. I think in terms of their energy performance, we are and will continue to scrutinize how they are managing 

their energy costs that are consistent with what we are trying to 

do in the non-delegated part of the portfolio. 

I think the SOP actually lays out the guidelines, and we are reviewing them annually, and we are going to be heightening the 

scrutiny for at least delegations. 

Ms. NORTON. I know if it is single tenant building, the custom 

is to delegate it. That is just all away from you altogether. What 

percentage of your buildings are delegated buildings, Mr. 

Winstead? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Madam Chair, I don’t know the exact, but it is 

basically dominant. It is basically 200 buildings out of our 1,500. 

So what is that? Seven percent or so. 

Ms. NORTON. They are big ones like Ronald Reagan, I guess. Is 

Ronald Reagan such a building or is that your building? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Multi-tenanted building, it is our building but the 

Department of Agriculture. 

Ms. NORTON. USDA would be such a building. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Sorry. 

Ms. NORTON. USDA would be such a building. 

Mr. WINSTEAD. Yes, USDA is such a building. 

Ms. NORTON. I am interested in your getting a hold of them as 

a matter of performance and not merely as a matter of policy, and 

I am interested in working with you. We are interested in making 

easier for you to do as we codify what should be. 

I think, Mr. Grone, you could be. I often find the military has 

found ways to do things that are helpful on the civilian side, and 

I was intrigued by the so-called awareness program for military 

housing. You have all these military bases strewn all over the 

world. You have military housing, millions of people in them. You 

have got hospital facilities. I mean you are a country unto yourself. 

Tell us about this awareness program, particularly since we are 

interested in changing the culture. 

Mr. GRONE. Well, the awareness programs that the various components run are a critical and ongoing process where our people 

are informed about the need to conserve, how to conserve. In many 

cases, they are tied back to specific programs. 

Ms. NORTON. If somebody lives in military housing, is that soldier, let us say, he and his family, responsible for all the utilities 

that are used? He pays for it or does DOD pay for it? 

Mr. GRONE. In our military housing that has been privatized, 

utilities are built into the lease arrangement. So in that sense the 

member does pay utilities. 

Ms. NORTON. That helps. 

41

Mr. GRONE. Traditionally, in military family housing, members 

did not pay lease payments or care for utilities or the like, and the 

classic free rider problem, economic free rider problem often occurred. In our privatized housing in the end state, we will have 

well in excess of 90 percent of our military family housing 

privatized. 

Ms. NORTON. Ninety percent is now privatized? 

Mr. GRONE. I will have to get the current number for the record, 

but in the end state, we will be in the 95, 96 percent range. 

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Ms. NORTON. End state, you said? 

Mr. GRONE. In the end state, yes, when we are completed with 

the program. 

The sensitivity to utilities and utility management and as we privatize those projects, as we privatize those assets, I know it was 

a question I know of some interest to you and the staff had raised 

it as well. How do we think about that? 

Each of the services, when we go out and think about the privatization of a military family housing area, sets some basic standards 

and guidelines into their request for proposals and how they want 

to think about that. In many cases, the local municipalities and 

utility companies and the District of Columbia may do something 

similar, but they often have baseline compliance requirements for 

energy management in new projects or development projects. 

In the procurement process the components give, we try not to 

be too specific to bind the hands of innovation, but there are credits 

that are given in the assessment process of the bid proposals when 

they come in for energy compliance, conservation, innovation to the 

point where the classic and best example of this and the headline 

example of this is the Army’s family housing privatization project 

in Hawaii which is the largest demonstrated use of solar ray in a 

housing development in the world. 

Five thousand units of housing all with photovoltaic laid down, 

and that saves several thousand tons of carbon emissions a year. 

I believe the number is 10,000, but we can get that for the record, 

on an annual basis. So it is a fairly significant effort in our housing 

privatization projects. 

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Mr. GRONE. Again, we are trying to incentivize the contractor 

base, the development base. As they bring these projects forward, 

they are incentivized to bring the best innovation and practice. Not 

a mil spec answer, what should the answer be, but we are relying 

on our private partners through incentives in the bid proposal process to bring us projects that rely on the best of private practice and 

the best innovation that is available to us at the time that we do 

the procurement. 

Ms. NORTON. One last question, Mr. Stanley, from your testimony, I am not sure I understand how the municipal aggregation 

program works. You speak about it being a reverse online auction 

for electricity procurement. Could you explain that to us, please? 

Mr. STANLEY. Sure. There are a number of different ways of procuring electricity. For most D.C. residents, you procure electricity 

through what is called a standard offer service. 

Ms. NORTON. Speak up into that microphone. 

Mr. STANLEY. I apologize. 

Ms. NORTON. It is not your fault. Something is wrong with these 

microphones. It couldn’t be that 100 percent of the people who testify before us have the same problem. It is on our end. So, go 

ahead. 

Mr. STANLEY. There are a number of ways of procuring electricity 

in the District of Columbia. For most District residents, electricity 

is procured through the local utility provider through what is called 

a standard offer service. By contrast, what the District of Columbia 

has done is it has aggregated all of its electricity use and it has 

put out for bid a request, well, a request for bids for providing utilities to the District of Columbia. 

What happens is that a number of providers will then submit 

bids to the District of Columbia and what has resulted is that we 

are now in a situation where we stand to save about $30 million 

over 3 years because we are not doing a standard offer service procurement but instead we have put it out for bid. It has been a significant value for the District of Columbia. 

We have been less successful in being able to provide that same 

type of service on the residential side, but we are working very 

hard to find a way of making sure that not only District Government benefits but also non-profit agencies within the District of Columbia as well as residences also. 

I am not sure if that helps to clarify it a little bit better. 

Ms. NORTON. It does. 

Mr. Winstead, you are obviously serviced through local municipal 

power companies as well, isn’t that right? 

Mr. WINSTEAD. That is correct. We have about 104 area-wide 

utility contracts, and we also have reverse online procurement for 

electricity in deregulated markets. So we have both somewhat what 

the District is doing as well as about 104 contracts. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, I want to thank all four of you for really very 

helpful testimony as we try to do think through what to do. 

We are not going to prescribe in statute what to do. We are going 

to delegate to the GSA the framework for a mechanism to both 

incentivize and enforce best practices in energy conservation, and 

you have been immensely helpful, all four of you, in providing a 

basis for the statutory guidance we are working on as we speak. 

46

Thank you very much for attending. 

[Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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