own customers include the residents in the 

retrofitted houses (including four generals’ homes). 

Base Housing, Utilities, and Maintenance are part of 

the Installation & Environment (I&E) organization, 

led by Col Thomas Phillips, Assistant Chief of Staff. 

I&E is charged with providing living and training 

facilities for the Marines and for meeting federal 

energy goals.

Total customer satisfaction was the goal and 

teamwork was the method adopted for this project by 

CP&L and its prime contractor, Strategic Resource 

Solutions (SRS). This approach fostered good faith 

and creativity that resulted in the technical success of 

the project and a good financial deal for Camp 

Lejeune. The GHPs have 

improved the quality of life 

in family housing on the 

base and are helping Camp 

Lejeune meet federal 

energy and emissions 

reduction goals.

Background

Camp Lejeune, the largest 

U.S. Marine Corps base in 

the world, is near 

Jacksonville, North 

Carolina, and includes 

Marine Corps Air Station 

New River, Camp Johnson, 

Camp Geiger, and the 

Marine Corps’ Engineering, 

Service Support, and 

Infantry schools. With 

45,000 Marines and 4,400 

single-family homes, the 

base uses about a quarter of all energy used by the 

Marine Corps. To Camp Lejeune’s energy and 

facilities professionals, energy efficiency is 

important, but never takes precedence over the 

welfare and morale of the Marines. Energy-effiency 

projects at Camp Lejeune must save energy and 

money without adversely affecting the well-being of 

the Marines and their families on base.

Camp Lejeune has a history of pursuing energy 

efficiency and controlling energy costs, but in 1998 it 

hadn’t yet installed any GHPs. At that time, the GSA 

areawide contract covering the base’s procurement of 

The distinguishing characteristics of this project have 

as much to do with people and partnerships as with 

technology. Energy conservation must fit into—even 

enhance—Camp Lejeune’s mission to train Marines, 

as well as save energy and money, so it takes a team 

to fit all the pieces of the project puzzle together. 

Camp Lejeune Energy Manager Jim Sides 

championed the GHP project at the hub of a team that 

included people from the base, CP&L, and contractor 

companies.

The primary customer at Camp Lejeune was base 

Family Housing Office Director Kenneth Day, whose 

Case Study

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, “Home of 

Expeditionary Forces in Readiness,” has cut energy 

use by 33% in four family housing areas by 

replacing old heating and cooling equipment with 

geothermal heat pumps (GHPs, also known as 

ground-source heat pumps) in 2089 homes. The $16 

million project, one of the largest ever financed by a 

federal agency under a utility energy services 

contract (UESC), was undertaken in partnership 

with Camp Lejeune’s electric utility, Carolina Power 

& Light (CP&L). Annual savings of almost $1.5 

million from the new GHPs will pay off the financed 

part of the investment, about $12.7 million, in ten 

years.

GHPs Improve Housing and Save Energy at Camp Lejeune

Family housing retrofits financed under a utility energy services contract

U.S. Department

of Energy

Office of Energy

Efficiency and

Renewable Energy

Utility

Services

Case Study

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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Camp Lejeune Energy Manager Jim Sides (right) and Bob Dupuis of CP&L led efforts to

develop a $16 million GHP project for base family housing.

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have all new equipment at 

virtually no expense to us,” 

because cost savings will 

pay for the project, he said. 

“I’m going to be paying the 

electricity bills over the next 

ten years anyway, whether I 

put the geothermals in or 

not, but this way in ten 

years I get the savings.”

Project Summary

Project Development

The GHP project was Camp 

Lejeune’s biggest energyefficiency investment ever, 

first task order under a 

UESC, and first GHP 

retrofit, so nothing about it was “routine.” The 

engineering aspects of project development were 

coordinated by Jerry Rowlands, an energy engineer 

and SRS accounts manager at the time, and Don 

Hamilton, CP&L energy engineer. Rowlands, who 

had previously led energy conservation programs at 

Marine Corps headquarters, said that the relative 

novelty of GHPs and the utility contracting vehicle 

made the project a unique challenge in his 

experience.

utility commodities was fairly new, and Jim Sides and 

Bob Dupuis, CP&L Military Accounts Manager, 

were working on establishing a basic ordering 

agreement to cover demand-side management 

services.

The technology and timing of this project turned out 

to be perfect for Camp Lejeune. The heat pumps in 

almost half of the base’s 4,477 housing units had 

been installed in 1980–82, many were beyond their 

15-year nominal service lives, and most were 

requiring frequent service and repair. Doing nothing 

wasn’t an option any longer, and the Housing Office 

was preparing to issue an RFP for the first phase of a 

wholesale like-for-like replacement using budgeted 

funds. Jim Sides, who had often discussed the 

benefits of GHPs with CP&L’s Bob Dupuis, heard 

about the plan and saw an opportunity. It was clear to 

Dupuis that Camp Lejeune could get far greater longterm value from GHPs than from standard air-source 

heat pumps.

J. O. (Joe) Parks, who was Director of Housing when 

the project was first proposed, was unaware of the 

opportunities for financing federal energy projects 

until Dupuis pitched the idea: “Would you be 

interested [in installing GHPs] if you could use 

someone else’s money to do it?” Dupuis explained, “I 

wanted to show them that even though they had cash 

in hand, they could use that to buy something else 

they really needed and pay for GHPs with savings.”

“It was a good pitch, especially when it’s hard to 

come up with project money,” said present Director 

of Housing, Kenneth Day. He is delighted to have 

improved base housing and living conditions for his 

residents now, without waiting through the typical 

five-year appropriations programming cycle. “We 

Almost half of Camp Lejeune's 4477 family housing units were retrofitted with GHPs.

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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

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Kenneth Day, Director of Housing, is pleased to have all

new heating and cooling equipment in 2089 family

housing units on base.
reduced base-wide peak demand by about 7%, or 5 

MW.

Although maintenance cost savings are not calculated 

into the payments for the retrofits, the minimal 

maintenance required for GHPs is a huge advantage, 

according to Levi Hill, Camp Lejeune’s Housing 

Maintenance Manager. Hill said that now, with GHPs 

in about 47% of Camp Lejeune’s family housing 

units, his staff finally has time to start taking care of a 

long list of deferred maintenance tasks. The GHPs 

are working perfectly, and the hot water heaters, 

which are no longer overloaded, also require less 

maintenance. Where the GHPs are installed, the base 

has also quit using its radio-controlled load 

capacity was installed, averaging 1.68 ton per unit. 

An average of two boreholes per home of 180 feet 

average depth were drilled for the ground heat 

exchangers. About 786,000 linear feet of piping, 

which would reach about 148 miles, was installed in 

the bores. The GHPs were custom-built for Camp 

Lejeune by ClimateMaster and were designed for 

easy installation and dependable operation. 

Desuperheaters were added wherever possible to 

supplement hot water heating. The desuperheaters 

reduce the cost of water heating significantly when 

the GHPs are in heating mode and provide hot water 

essentially for free when the heat pumps are in 

cooling mode and are dumping excess heat. The 

GHPs can potentially operate at SEER 20, or up to 25 

in combination with desuperheaters.

The GHPs and desuperheaters have reduced energy 

use by about 33% in the retrofitted houses, and have 

Also, contracting with the U.S. Marine Corps may be 

as complicated as it gets. Camp Lejeune’s real estate 

is owned by the U.S. Department of the Navy, of 

which the USMC is a part. Concurrence in 

contracting decisions is needed from both the USMC 

and the Navy, but there is no resident contracting 

authority at Camp Lejeune. Capital improvements, 

construction, and other contracting is handled by the 

Atlantic Division of the Naval Facilities Engineering 

Command (LANTDIV NAVFAC) in Norfolk, 

Virginia. 

During the summer of 1998, NAVFAC was consulted 

about the potential GHP project and quickly 

requested a definitive answer to the bottom-line 

question: Yes or no, will savings pay for this project 

in ten years or less? Although the answer would be 

based on preliminary data, before design work could 

be done, the numbers had to be much better than 

ballpark. “We had to have a proposal that was 

acceptable to everyone, with a construction cost we 

could live with,” said Victor Stephenson, CP&L 

Federal Contracts Manager.

This first proposal and cost estimate was developed 

by Rowlands and Hamilton, with help from the 

International Ground Source Heat Pump Association. 

To determine feasibility and estimate construction 

costs, they gathered electricity consumption data, 

weather data, and utility rates; they developed good 

estimates of energy consumption and cost; and they 

did detailed heat loss and heat gain analyses on each 

type of home to be retrofitted. Their numbers 

indicated a good opportunity to save energy and 

money, and a ten-year payback. 

LANTDIV agreed that this was a project worth 

doing, and Camp Lejeune requested that CP&L take 

the next step by providing a proposal including 35% 

design and detailed energy survey. At this point the 

unpredictability factor came into play, and the project 

was stalled for several months by the Anti-Deficiency 

Act because no identifiable funds were available to 

pay for the feasibility study. At the beginning of the 

next fiscal year funds were identified, and the 35% 

design was completed in the spring of 1999.

Over the next year, Rowlands led the efforts to 

produce the final feasibility studies, specifications, 

and 95% engineering designs that comprised the final 

proposal, culminating in award of the project to 

CP&L and SRS in the spring of 2000. 

Construction

The construction project began in July, and the 

retrofits were finished in July 2001, three months 

ahead of schedule. A total of 3500 tons of heat pump 

Base Maintenance Officer Lt Col Nicholson, Energy Manager

Jim Sides, and Utilities Director Steve Soller collaborated with

Camp Lejeune's Housing Office and others to make the GHP

project work.

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much money at it, we don’t have a project. Still, you 

need to keep in mind that to get optimal performance 

all the related parts have to work,” he said.

The team’s approach to the installation phase 

recognized that the work would disrupt each 

resident’s routine for a day, but aimed to mitigate the 

inconvenience as much as possible. Bob Dupuis said, 

“We wanted to treat the people as you’d want to be 

treated in your own home, and we tried to be very 

proactive.”

SRS made appointments with residents and asked 

that someone be at home when crews were installing 

the equipment. The intent was to take out the old unit 

and install the new within one eight-hour working 

day. If the new unit wasn’t up and running at the end 

of the day, SRS sent the resident a written apology 

for the inconvenience, and in some cases flowers or a 

gift certificate for dinner. On a few cold nights, they 

paid for some families’ dinner and a night’s stay in a 

nearby hotel to ease a hardship—if there were a baby 

in the house, for example.

Dupuis clarified that the percentage of cases calling 

for such remedies was very small. “You couldn’t 

afford to do the project if you did that a lot. But if we 

upset somebody or didn’t do the job the way we said 

we would, then we took care of it and made it right. 

We knew, having worked with base housing in the 

past, that Ken Day’s biggest nightmare is having a lot 

of phone calls from unhappy residents,” he said.

This approach to customer service prevented 

problems and complaints from spilling over to the 

Housing and Utilities organizations, and Ken Day 

was spared the nightmares. Day said, “SRS had 

management system to turn water heaters and HVAC 

systems off during peak load periods, which is 

appreciated both by residents and by maintenance 

staff who have fewer calls and complaints to handle.

Installation

Bob Reierson, SRS Project Manager, stressed that 

Camp Lejeune, CP&L, SRS, and all the 

subcontractors planned and carried out the project as 

a team, from start to finish. The team agreed from 

day one that customer satisfaction would be key to a 

successful project and worked methodically on 

communicating with residents to minimize the 

inevitable disruption of installing the GHPs. SRS 

informed all residents of the planned “invasion,” first 

by drilling rigs to drill the bores, then by the crews 

who would take out the old equipment and install the 

new. The work wouldn’t be finished until the lawns 

were reseeded where the drilling rigs had worked.

Ultimate customer satisfaction depended on the 

performance of the new GHPs, and the team decided 

to do whatever was required to make sure the GHPs 

would work well. Crews inspected thermostats, water 

heaters, air ducts, and the spaces where the new units 

would be installed. Wherever ancillary equipment 

related to the heat pumps was faulty, worn out, or 

looked like it might cause a problem, it was fixed or 

replaced, even though this work was beyond the 

formal scope of the job. Housing Maintenance 

supplied parts and, if major repairs were required, 

some labor.

Reierson noted that cost containment is also 

important. “You’ve got to be careful because we’re in 

the business to save energy and if you throw too 

At left, an employee of Humphrey Mechanical Engineering discharges the refrigerant from an old heat pump in preparation for

removing it. After installation, the small white box at foundation level seen in the lower left corner of the photo at right is the only

outdoor evidence of the new GHPs.

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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
energy cost savings would be credited to the utility 

department. To work through the money trails and 

come to agreement, Stephenson said, “takes an 

incredible degree of cooperation.” Bob Dupuis 

confirmed that the project could not have happened 

without a solid team effort. “Camp Lejeune has 

wonderful relationships all the way around — 

everybody is willing to work together,” he said.

Owning and Fixing Problems

Camp Lejeune personnel are very pleased with the 

outcome of the GHP project, but not because 

everything went perfectly and exactly as planned. In 

fact, SRS and its subcontractors faced several 

problems during construction that might have been 

base to live up to, according to Col. Phillips. “I’m 

very happy with the contracting effort I’ve seen in the 

GHP project. I get a little touchy if I hear about 

contractors driving on grass with heavy equipment, or 

going into houses and disturbing residents, but SRS 

and their subcontractors jumped on any problems that 

came up before I had to get involved. About half of 

the work on base is done by contractors, and SRS is 

the best I’ve dealt with,” he said.

Budget Protocols

Victor Stephenson pointed out that cooperation 

among Camp Lejeune’s different organizations was 

critical to making the project work. Budgeting 

protocols can be one of the biggest obstacles to 

implementing financed energy projects at federal 

sites. At Camp Lejeune, the capital equipment money 

used to pay for part of the GHP project had to come 

from some activity/program on the base, but the 

people on call 24/7, 365 days. They were very 

proactive in going out and taking care of the 

complaints and concerns of the people. The feedback 

I’m getting from the residents is very positive, and 

I’m very satisfied.”

Benefits of Utility Contracting

Even though Camp Lejeune’s Family Housing Office 

had money in hand to buy air-source heat pumps, 

they chose to develop a financed GHP retrofit project 

in partnership with CP&L because it offered superior 

long-term value for the base. Housing Director Ken 

Day said that the cycle to get funds for energyimprovement projects typically takes about five 

years, and even then, appropriations are never 

guaranteed. Base Maintenance Officer Lt Col David 

Nicholson explained that utility financing opened 

new avenues to meeting Camp Lejeune’s energy 

goals. “Heat pumps aren’t a sexy thing. Put them up 

against a fighter jet for funding, and I can tell you 

what’s going to win. We wouldn’t have been able to 

do this any other way,” Nicholson said.

Col Thomas Phillips, Assistant Chief of Staff, I&E, 

strongly encourages using utility programs to finance 

energy projects and said, “I can’t meet my mandates 

without funding projects in alternative ways.”

Lessons Learned

“We didn’t say we’d be perfect, but we said we’d 

make it right.” — Bob Dupuis

Any big energy project is a complex, many-faceted 

endeavor, and chances are that some things will not 

work perfectly on the first try. The team that made the 

Camp Lejeune project happen learned that building a 

strong, good-faith partnership between customer and 

service provider is the first step to overcoming the 

inevitable obstacles. Another prime asset is a genuine 

team commitment to making customer satisfaction 

the ultimate goal. These precepts are common themes 

in the lessons learned below.

Keys to Success: Planning, Customer Service, and 

Teamwork

Bob Reierson, SRS Project Manager, stresses three 

factors in the project’s success: planning, customer 

service, and teamwork. “We’re firm believers that 

planning is the key, and planning as a team helps a 

lot,” he said. The ongoing collaboration and 

communication between the base and the contractors 

kept all parties focused on common goals and 

produced some great ideas and creative problem 

solving. 

This approach set a new standard for contractors on 

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UNIT ED STAT ES OF AM ERICA

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

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GHPs ready to install and installation crew in Midway Park

housing area.
a great deal more than one 

mechanical installation per 

house. Most of the new units 

functioned properly from 

day one, but many of the 

residents didn’t understand 

their controls or how they 

functioned. Many also 

thought that the GHPs were 

doing all the water heating 

(inadequately) and didn’t 

understand that their water 

heaters had been turned 

down to 120 degrees to 

comply with a U.S. Military 

law. Reierson said that they 

handled many service calls 

that had nothing to do with 

the GHPs. Regardless, 

Reierson always treated the 

residents as his valued 

customers, and remains 

convinced that this is key to a successful project. 

The most persistent and frequent problem has 

involved dealing with the natural human tendency to 

dislike change and fear the unknown, according to 

Reierson. “It’s not an insurmountable problem, and 

our attitude is that we will deal with it, but it takes a 

lot of time,” he said.

• Resident Surveys

SRS went the extra mile in customer service by 

mailing out customer surveys to find out how they 

could make the construction situation better for the 

residents. The survey results indicated high 

percentages of satisfaction but also showed SRS a 

few areas where improvements were possible. As a 

result of insights gained from survey responses, SRS 

improved their communication with residents about 

how the new systems worked and distributed an 

informational letter about the GHP project to all 

residents for a second time. The survey results also 

indicated that residents’ first impressions of the 

project could be improved and led SRS to change the 

way they made their initial contacts with residents.

• Money Well Spent

An unusual cold snap in December 2000, when about 

half of the GHPs had been installed, was a severe test 

of the GHPs’ capabilities. Even though the GHPs 

worked fine (and much better than the air-source heat 

pumps), many residents just felt cold, as temperatures 

stayed near or below freezing for more than two 

weeks. Reierson answered a service call one night to 

expected to cause major conflicts or delays. It was 

discovered, for example, that the heat exchanger 

loops on about 50 units were too short to provide the 

required heating and cooling capacity. To fix the 

problem, additional bores and loops were installed, 

without allowing the situation to become Camp 

Lejeune’s problem. The way the CP&L/SRS team 

handled this and other problems—owning them 

immediately and fixing them quickly—earned the 

customer’s respect.

• When you work on the general’s house . . .

When asked about “lessons learned,” one of the first 

things Reierson said was, “When you work on the 

general’s house, don’t assume anything and check 

everything twice.” An installation crew planned to put 

the new GHP for a general’s house in an existing 

linen closet, but they subsequently decided that a 

higher-capacity unit was needed there. The larger unit 

wouldn’t fit into the closet, so they decided to put the 

unit under the house instead where there was plenty 

of room. The installation was completed and the new 

unit was working fine—for a while. Without solid 

support, the unit had lost its footing, tipped, and shut 

off, as per design specifications. The problem was 

quickly fixed, and the team logged a valuable lesson 

learned. 

• Natural Human Aversion to Change

Throughout the construction period, SRS and its 

subcontractors handled service calls on the new 

GHPs, and soon realized that the retrofit job entailed 

Robert Reierson, SRS Project Manager (left), with satisfied customers Staff Sgt. Joe D.

Solis, Melanie Solis, and their daughter, at their home in Senior Enlisted Officers’ Family

Housing at Camp Lejeune.

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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

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and determined that the problem had originated in the 

manufacturing of the units, which had all been 

charged with coolant and sealed at the factory. 

ClimateMaster bench-checked all uninstalled units 

and didn’t find many problems, but found enough to 

warrant checking all the 

units that were already 

installed. ClimateMaster 

made sure all the GHPs at 

Camp Lejeune were fixed 

and has since changed their 

manufacturing process to 

prevent reoccurrence of this 

problem. 

Looking Ahead

A number of new energyefficiency projects are in 

progress at Camp Lejeune, 

and more are in 

development. Upgrading 

systems to monitor and 

manage energy use on the 

base is a high priority 

involving 23 new master 

electric meters and a 

commitment to the team concept passed the test when 

a problem with the GHPs surfaced during the cold 

snap. A few families actually were cold because their 

GHPs, which seemed to have insufficient coolant, 

were not functioning properly. The team decided to 

shut the project down to determine the extent of the 

problem. ClimateMaster staff came to Camp Lejeune 

quickly fix a small problem with a GHP in a house 

where a couple with a new baby lived. Reierson 

decided then to provide a portable heater for them to 

use until the weather warmed up. The next day, 

Reierson suggested and the team decided to purchase 

every oil-filled radiant heater (the safest kind of 

portable heater) in lower North Carolina to 

supplement the residents’ heat. Reierson said, “We 

thought it was money well spent. We kept our 

customers satisfied. We just gave them heaters 

because they were cold, even though the units were 

functioning great. We gave a lot of heaters to people 

with air-source heat pumps, too.” (The heaters also 

came in handy while the short loops were being 

replaced.) When Ken Day and Lt Col Nicholson talk 

about the heaters it’s clear that they were surprised 

and impressed by Reierson’s response to the situation 

and that he’s earned near-hero status in their eyes.

• Equipment Quality Assurance

A quality energy project obviously depends on the 

quality of the new equipment, so the team gave 

careful consideration to choosing a supplier for the 

GHPs. Before signing the contract with 

ClimateMaster, Reierson and several others spent two 

days at their plant in Oklahoma City doing hands-on 

inspections of the recommended heat pump unit and 

its design, the factory, and the manufacturing process. 

After joining the team, ClimateMaster helped train 

and certify contractor and Camp Lejeune personnel 

as GHP installers. “We’ve had ClimateMaster right 

with us every step of the way,” Reierson said.

ClimateMaster’s experience in the field and their 

Col Thomas Phillips, Assistant Chief of Staff, strongly

encourages using utility programs to finance energy projects

and said, “I can’t meet my mandates without funding projects

in alternative ways.”

UNIT ED STAT ES OF AM ERICA

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Internet: http://www.eren.doe.gov/femp/

Workers complete the last stage of the construction project: repairing and reseeding lawns.
For More Information

For more information about the project please 

contact: 

• Jim Sides, Camp Lejeune Energy Manager, at 910-

451-5950, ext. 201, or sidesjc@lejeune.usmc.mil;

• David McAndrew of FEMP at 202-586-7722, or 

david.mcandrew@ee.doe.gov;

• John Shonder of the FEMP GHP Core Team at 865-

574-2015, or shonderja@ornl.gov; or

• Doug Culbreth of DOE’s Atlanta Regional Office at 

919-782-5238, or carson.culbreth@hq.doe.gov.

This case study was researched, written, and photographed for the 

U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management 

Program (FEMP) by Erica Atkin, with help from other members of 

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s FEMP team. Layout by Brett 

Hopwood. FEMP gratefully acknowledges the time and attention 

contributed to this project by Camp Lejeune, CP&L, and SRS staff 

who provided tours, interviews, and photo opportunities and 

reviewed the case study.

SiteNet system to integrate operation of power 

systems and load management plans. The base is 

installing infrared heat in hangars, implementing 

other lighting upgrades, and implementing a range of 

other improvements in projects financed by utility 

contracts and energy savings performance contracts, 

or paid for by appropriated funds. A GHP retrofit for 

the Marston Pavilion conference center is underway, 

and the base is studying the feasibility of GHP 

retrofits for more family housing units.

According to Col Phillips, GHPs will figure 

prominently in Camp Lejuene’s energy strategy: 

“Meeting our energy goals is hard to do because our 

customer isn’t focused on this, and there are too 

many competing priorities; but GHPs are exciting—I 

can start showing some progress toward the goal and 

see the graph start going in the other direction.”

FEMP Help Desk:

800-DOE-EREC

 (363-3732)

Internet:

http://www.eren.doe

gov/femp/

UNIT ED STAT ES OF AM ERICA

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

A GHP retrofit of Camp Lejeune’s Marston Pavilion conference center is underway.

Produced for the

U.S. Department

of Energy by Oak

Ridge National

Laboratory

May 2002

Printed with a renewable-source ink on paper containing at least 50% wastewater, including 20% postconsumer waste