Federal Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Mayock said last week that the administration’s Federal Sustainability Plan will put the federal government “back in a position where we’re leading by example” on climate goals for the private sector to emulate.

“The government basically sat out sustainability for four years, and at best, things stayed in place, and at worst, we went backward. So we’re in a rebuilding phase and a learning phase,” Mayock said on June 28 at the Federal Sustainability Forum, hosted by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and the Digital Climate Alliance.

President Biden, as part of an executive order he signed last year, expects agencies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050. That includes a 65% reduction by 2030.

“We’re not getting where we need to go, unless we focus on how we scale. And how we scale is through technology,” Mayock said.

Melanie Nakagawa, special assistant to the president and senior director for climate and energy at the National Security Council, said the leadership of at least 20 agencies is committed to implementing the administration’s clean-energy goals across the federal government.

“It’s really hard to find a department or agency that isn’t willing to take the call or engage,” Nakagawa said.

While agencies with the biggest climate impact are moving ahead on the administration’s sustainability goals, Mayock said the Federal Sustainability Plan focuses on making green initiatives a top priority governmentwide.

“We need to start acting and delivering as an enterprise, versus the deeply federated federal government that we are today. There are lots of efficiencies and lots of actions that we can take when we work better and more closely together,” he said.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality in May launched an interagency task force with the General Services Administration, the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop the first-ever Federal Building Performance Standards.

The standards will establish metrics, targets and tracking methods to reach federal carbon emissions goals. Mayock said the standards, which he said will be publicly released in two or three months, will set standard performance goals across more than 300,000 federal buildings.

“The ways that we’ve executed this sustainability plan and past versions of it over past administrations, that didn’t speak to the decarbonization moment that we’re in today,” Mayock said.

While the administration is making government more sustainable where possible, several administration officials said some federal climate goals will rely more on cooperation with the private sector.

Mayock said emerging sustainability technologies, for example, will be crucial to meeting some of the federal government’s climate goals.

“A lot of the technology, but not all of the technology, is where we want to be. How do we handle that moment in the marketplace to make progress now, while we’re all pushing for the technology that we need to be delivered along the pathway?” Mayock said.

Tanuj Deora, CEQ’s director for clean energy, said the administration is trying to use its collective buying power to support sustainable energy industries but is also trying to overcome supply constraints in the market for goods like electric vehicles.

“We don’t want to be consumptive of the market’s ability to supply. We don’t want to crowd out other folks who are trying to invest. I know with electric vehicles right now, one of the biggest challenges GSA has is that the vehicles just aren’t available,” Deora said.

Deora said a pandemic-era shortage of semiconductor chips has limited the supply of all vehicles, including electric vehicles, for federal agencies to purchase.

White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under the Obama administration, said last year that less than 1% of the federal fleet is plug-in electric vehicles, and that agencies bought only 200 electric vehicles in 2020.

Kinga Hydras, a sustainable program design expert with GSA’s Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, said electrifying the federal fleet also impacts plans to improve the energy efficiency of federal buildings.

“It’s not just buying the vehicles, it’s also creating the infrastructure and doing it in a smart way.  Now that it all plugs into our federal building portfolio, then how does that impact our energy consumption? How do we go about partnering with the utilities in the servicing markets, and maybe utilize the electric vehicle fleet as backup power. A lot of questions, a lot of opportunities out there,” Hydras said.

Hydras said GSA’s federal building portfolio within the Washington, D.C. metro area has reduced energy consumption by 60% through integrated energy retrofit projects.

GSA manages a portfolio of 370 million rentable square feet of space for more than a million federal employees. Its Federal Acquisition Service, meanwhile, oversees about $75 billion worth of annual contracts.

“We are all in it together. As most federal agencies and large organizations have silos, we do have silos too, but this aggressive goal brought us all together,” Hydras said.

The Energy Department, meanwhile, partnering with GSA to spend $13 million to retrofit and upgrade 17 federal facilities to reduce emissions and energy costs.

“We believe technology is way ahead. We see in the marketplace the technology’s there. We need to be smart about implementing and using everything in our tool house,” Hydras said.

Hydras pointed to the New Carrollton Federal Building as an example of a successful retrofit project. The building went through upgrades between 2012 to 201, which reduced the building’s energy consumption by 62% and cut water consumption in half.

Deora said federal agencies can better leverage data to find more buildings that stand to benefit the most from these sustainable upgrades, much like the New Carrollton Federal Building.

“It’s just a great example. There was one great value case, how can we take that and then replicate that and make that system-wide? We need to think about the value stack from not just energy or storage or whatever, but from the data itself,” Deora said.

The Biden administration is also looking to accelerate the pace of federal permitting and environmental reviews for thousands of infrastructure projects under the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The White House in May released a permitting action plan outlining ways agencies can ensure infrastructure spending projects remain on time and on budget.

However, Cole Simons, a policy adviser for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said that more federal permitting reforms to are needed to prevent wasteful infrastructure spending.

“We need to eliminate some of the duplicity that is in the process. We’ve got issues right now, where Army Corps [of Engineers] says yes. Six months later, the EPA drops in and says ‘Just kidding, no,’ and there’s already been steel put in the ground, or there’s already been a process started, that just creates more waste, both from having already started a process and having to end it and you’re just like, ‘Well, what do we do with stuff that’s already there?’ as well as a lot of financial waste and a lot of uncertainty provided to anybody who seeks to develop in the U.S,” Simons said.

The targets are part of the service’s new climate change strategy, which the Navy released on Tuesday. The document follows the broader Defense Department strategy, which braces the military against the future effects of extreme weather and attempts to mitigate some of the Pentagon’s impacts on the environment.

“The Navy is truly in the crosshairs of the climate crisis and it does impact our combat readiness at the Naval Academy and out in the fleet and in the Marine Corps as well too,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee last week. “We’re making great strides to try to come to terms with this.”

Del Toro noted that Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany became the military’s first net-zero base this month, meaning it gets as much power from renewable resources as it does from fossil fuels.

The report laid out a handful of specific targets that will achieve two specific goals: making sure the Navy and its facilities can operate in a world impacted by climate change; and reducing the Navy’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

To reduce waste, the Navy will cut back emissions by 65% by 2050, will get all of its power from carbon pollution-free sources by 2030 and buy zero-emissions vehicles by 2035. All light-duty vehicles will be zero-emission by 2027. The Navy will also reduce emissions from buildings by 50% by 2032 and divert at least half of its waste from landfills by using other methods like composting food.

The Navy has made efforts in the past to cut back on emissions, but never to this extent. In 2016, it launched its Great Green Fleet, which used alternative fuels to power ships and other vehicles.

The service is developing its strategy around DoD’s five lines of effort on climate change. Those include things like climate-informed decision making, where Navy leaders train for situations of extreme weather, and supply chain resilience, in which the Navy invests in companies that support national security and climate benefits.

“The Navy is leveraging public and private innovation in the climate and energy resilience sectors by implementing Silicon Valley-based principles through NavalX Tech Bridges and business accelerators,” the report states. “Tech Bridges attract small and medium businesses using innovation challenges, often teaming with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership organizations and the DoD-funded National Security Innovation Network.”

Last October, the Pentagon took its largest step yet to become more climate conscious by releasing its climate adaptation strategy. DoD announced it will create a climate chief and stated that it will consider climate in every decision it makes from now on.

“Climate change will continue to amplify operational demands on the force, degrade installations and infrastructure, increase health risks to our service members, and could require modifications to existing and planned equipment,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in the plan. “Extreme weather events are already costing the Department billions of dollars and are degrading mission capabilities.”

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Solar panels have a life cycle. The billions of panels covering roofs and once-pristine landscapes and maybe even your office building will all need to be disposed of and replaced at some point. Now the Energy Department has issued an action plan for how to safely and economically handle photovoltaic materials that have worn out. For details, the Energy Department’s photovoltaics program manager, Lenny Tinker joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Tinker, good to have you on.

Lenny Tinker: Thank you very much, nice to be here.

Tom Temin: So I didn’t realize these things don’t last forever, but they don’t what happens? How do they wear out?

Lenny Tinker: Well, there’s a lot of different ways that they can actually wear out. Typically, what happens is that, you know, they’re outside sort of, they’re exposed to like the elements. And so different things can happen through thermal cycling, cracks can propagate, contacts can oxidize. But effectively, the energy output of the system starts to decrease over about 20 to 30 years is the expected lifetime.

Tom Temin: All right, and then inside these materials that actually produce the current, are these hazardous materials? Are they safe to handle? What are the issues?

Lenny Tinker: Well, there are a variety of different materials inside the modules themselves. Mostly, the modules are totally safe. But there are some materials that are used that can be actually dangerous. For example, lead can be used in the solder, like many of the electronics that we all use. And therefore it’s important that people follow EPA regulations and testing for how to deal with the materials.

Tom Temin: Got it. And is the disposal generally carried out by commercial companies locally? Suppose I have a building and there’s a lot of photovoltaics cells, they have to be removed, who does that kind of work in general?

Lenny Tinker: So that work is typically contracted out and the disposal themselves depending on the actual modules being used. So they’re these tests that are regulated by the EPA known as toxicity characteristic leaching protocols, or TCLP. So those modules would be tested, that would then determine how they had to dispose of whether or not they’d be considered hazardous waste, or it could be disposed of as just general landfill waste. And then typically, someone would contract at someone to actually take down the system and then dispose of it appropriately.

Tom Temin: All right, so what are the dangers here and tell us about the action plan, what is the Energy Department trying to do here with the action plan?

Lenny Tinker: So our goal with the action plan is to indicate for the community and to set a direction for how we could be even better than the regulations that I mentioned that are stipulated by the EPA. So we see there’s potentially a possibility to improve the way that materials are disposed of, and actually increase the recycling potential of the entire system. Now, the bulk of a PV system is steel, and aluminum and copper. And the recycling procedures for that are pretty well worked out the current industry, but the modules themselves because they’re composites and composite materials are a little more complicated, there’s some opportunity to figure out how to better recycle and recover the value of those modules. And so in our action plan, we lay out a direction for research that can be done as well as stakeholder engagement, and aggregating data. So everyone’s aware of what’s actually going on with the modules such that we can, you know, make PDS as good for the environment as possible.

Tom Temin: And of course, when you do recycling carefully, and removal and recycling, it can be expensive. And so is the economics of this part of the calculus?

Lenny Tinker: Oh, absolutely. The economics are the foundation of a lot of the decisions that people are making in terms of energy and actually disposal of systems. So right now, recycling can be about almost 10 times as expensive as just general disposal. And so we’re trying to do is look at you know, like I said, how can you better recover value out of the modules when you recycle them? Because that, of course, helps pay for the recycling itself? And also, how can you develop modules and produce them in a way that makes it even easier to separate?

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Lenny Tinker. He’s an Energy Department of photovoltaics program manager, part of the DoD’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. And the materials that are rare that are in these might be outsourced, originally from the United States, is there the possibility that by recycling properly, we could almost develop a source of rare materials from an effect mining the old solar panels right here in the United States?

Lenny Tinker: Absolutely, there’s opportunity to recover rare and valuable materials from photovoltaic systems. The bulk of the system as a whole is, like I said, steel and aluminum and copper. Now, that’s the system. In the modules, there’s some more precious materials such as silver, which is used on the front to collect the electricity. There’s also small amounts of other materials depending on the module, such as tellurium, which could be recovered. The absolute magnitude of what could be recovered from PV systems for a while can be quite low, because the majority of systems deployed right now, over 75% of them have been deployed in the last five years. And and with an expected lifetime of 25 to 30 years or maybe even longer, there’s not a lot to quote unquote mine now. But that being said, there is an opportunity to recover those materials when the time comes for decommissioning.

Tom Temin: Sure, mining was my word, but the idea they could at some point in the future be recovered and reused to make new panels?

Lenny Tinker: Absolutely. One of the main goals of the Department of Energy SET office is to make sure that we recover as much value out of the system, which helps the economics on the levelized basis for electricity. So it can be even cheaper than it is today.

Tom Temin: All right, and this action plan then who is it specifically aimed at?

Lenny Tinker: The action plan is aimed at all of our stakeholders, it’s a way for us to signal to people that would apply to our office, as well as people that are involved in the solar industry, and in policymakers for what we see as an opportunity and a future direction for sort of waste management.

Tom Temin: Yeah, so this could be kind of a new niche industry in waste management, if it’s done properly. Fair to say?

Lenny Tinker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s already companies today looking at how they could get into this industry.

Tom Temin: And does DOE have any sense of the tonnage or square footage or ounces, I don’t know what the right measures are, for these materials that will be eventually need to be recycled in the future?

Lenny Tinker: Yeah, so we can make predictions on the actual amount that could be released. The current administration has an ambitious goal to have 100% carbon free electricity by 2035. And in that scenario, we actually end up ramping sort of quite a bit, we still think that the amount of waste that we generated by PV systems is actually relatively low, so less than about a tenth of a percent of total waste. So we can break into the actual tonnes here and there and how that fractions out but the point is, is that it’s a significant but not extraordinarily large amount of waste.

Tom Temin: OK, and are you one of those solar panels on the roof kind of guys yourself?

Lenny Tinker: Unfortunately, with my current house, it didn’t work out. But I am a member of a community solar program where I can pay into the system and then have electricity generated from my bill

Tom Temin: Or you could put up a steeple with a windmill on top.

Lenny Tinker: That would be a lot more challenging, and definitely not as scalable as a PV system, which can be made almost any arbitrary size.

Tom Temin: All right, Lenny Tinker is a photovoltaics program manager at the Energy Department. Thanks so much for joining me.

Lenny Tinker: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

The General Services Administration sees a shift in contract obligation and business volume data where sustainability is concerned. Agencies increasingly rely on as-a-service models for enterprise IT infrastructure, requiring less owned physical infrastructure hardware.

Laura Stanton, assistant commissioner for IT Category at GSA, said agencies are buying the capabilities they need through industry, and letting industry manage things on the back end. That shrinks the footprint of data centers, which consume about 2% electricity in the U.S., according to the Energy Department. She said sustainability is built into contracting language more regularly, which aligns with the Biden administration’s strategy to harness federal procurement power for the sake of environmental sustainability.

In GSA’s enterprise infrastructure solutions contract for network infrastructure, “We’ve added sustainability criteria into that contract, requirements for climate change and adoption, sustainability and green initiative, supporting environmental sustainability practices through the use of energy efficient, virtual and streamline technology that facilitates agile and expansive network communications,” she said on a panel as part of GSA’s Data Sustainability Summit this week.

There is also the complex commercial satellite communications solutions contract, which has climate change risk language, and mitigation has a contract deliverable to prepare and update, as needed, a corporate climate risk management plan. The plan would identify and addresses the mitigation of climate change risks to land-based equipment and services.

Sustainability requirements are also in the contract for government strategic solutions for desktops and laptops. Those now have a mandatory electronic product environmental assessment tool (EPEAT) that provides a standard configurations and minimum requirements for desktops, laptops, tablets and client devices, Stanton said.

“So we’re building it in to make sure that we have sustainable equipment that we’re making available to the federal government, so that this means that the agencies don’t have to add in those requirements when they’re putting their task orders together,” she said.

She referenced a report from technology research and consulting firm Gartner, which predicted that by 2025, more than 85% of organizations will use a cloud-first principle and that over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, compared to 30% in 2021.

Following that trend, the upcoming cloud-focused blanket purchase agreement, Ascend, which Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Sonny Hashmi shared on Wednesday, aims to reduce burdens for agencies and build in minimum thresholds for security, data ownership, and common terms and conditions. Stanton said GSA is also writing climate goals into that BPA.

“We’re in the early stages, through this BPA, of writing the environmental directives related to carbon-pollution-free energy for data centers, and will provide those cloud capabilities,” Stanton said. “So we’re looking at geothermal, hydroelectric, hydrokinetic, nuclear, solar, wind and the like, as [well as] looking at how do get to carbon-pollution-free energy in the data centers provided through this vehicle.”

Speaking at Thursday’s summit, Ben Levin, senior manager of Technology Assessment and Resource Development at the Green Electronics Council, said the full lifecycle of IT products needs to be considered when talking about “green” electronics. That includes the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, processing and assembly, product longevity, greenhouse gas emissions through each of those phases, and protect of the labor force in the supply chain.

As one of the most famous proponents of green electronics, the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program. An ENERGY STAR-certified server saves on average about 30% of the energy compared to a non-certified server, or about 650 kilowatt hours per year. Servers are measured for efficiency in the active state, according to Ryan Fogle, ENERGY STAR Data Center Product Development and Marketing manager.

“So how much work can you get done per watt of energy, which means that you, in essence, can complete more work with less hardware,” he said. “So if you can do more work with less energy, that means that there’s potentially less servers that you need to get that same amount of work done. Less servers tends to mean that there’s less support dollars needed for things like licensing and software fees, and between those fees, the actual cost of the servers, which tend not to be cheap.”

Multiple tools and guidance from EPA and GSA exist to help agencies procure more sustainable IT.

The Sustainable Facilities tool has a Procurement Professional section with template steps to ensure agencies are evaluating the total value when it comes to sustainability, plus with Federal Acquisition Regulation. The GSA Advantage catalogue lets users search for products by eco-friendliness, said Paul Morris, IT Hardware Category manager at FAS. In addition, ENERGY STAR has examples of procurement language on its website and its commercial and industrial offers designations to data centers, Fogle said.

NETL has been working on carbon capture and sequestration for at least 30 years before President Joe Biden’s executive orders on sustainability last year. One prime opportunity to cut energy consumption is at data centers, the demand for which is only expected to grow as government further embraces cloud computing and modernizes legacy IT. Currently they account for approximately 2% of total U.S. energy use, equivalent to 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building, according to DOE.

“Data centers are some of the most energy-intensive type buildings and a lot of that comes to electricity. So if we focus on decarbonizing [the] electricity sector, we have huge components of our economy that we miss,” Anderson said during the General Services Administration’s Data Center Sustainability Summit this week.

The country needs more integrated energy systems to get off fossil fuels, Anderson said. Four years ago his lab, along with the Idaho National Laboratory, which specializes in nuclear energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado formed a consortium to build on hybrid energy systems.

The placement of federal data centers could also be a way to transform communities left behind by a waning fossil-fuel-based economy. Anderson used the Mineral Gap Data Center in Wise County, Virginia, as an example. The center reclaimed some former coal mine sites and is powered by solar energy, sparking local economic investment and investment in renewables.

Wise isn’t alone – several Virginia counties are trying to attract data centers in traditionally coal-dependent regions with strong solar and geothermal resources for electricity.

“And certainly, our colleagues at the Department of Interior are in the process of deploying billions of dollars — $11 billion in the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program under the infrastructure bill — and billions of dollars in plugging orphan oil and gas wells around the country,” Anderson said. “These are truly opportunities to take an environmental legacy and turn it into economic opportunity.”

With about $62 billion of newly authorized funding for DOE in the infrastructure bill, NETL has a serious opportunity to leverage those reclamation projects for data centers. DOE is also releasing $19.5 million in awards for extracting sustainable critical minerals from coal waste, according to the initial report of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization.

Meanwhile, Anderson said the tri-labs also teamed up with the Pacific Northwest National lab to create a “net-zero laboratory initiative,” to reduce their scopes 1-3 emissions to zero over the next decade. This refers to emissions that directly and indirectly result from government activity.

“We will be working not only on site with decarbonizing our onsite usage, but with our power supply partners on driving forward the technologies that we have been developing in house and the Department of Energy with our partners,” he said. “And this is the call for partnership: I have the perfect audience here, we’ve been working with GSA on our power purchase agreements and many of our other sister federal agencies. There’s power in us putting all of our efforts together, there’s power — with the checks that we write through our power purchase agreements. And if we put our heads together, we can start driving the economy and creating the market that we need to see.”

The Defense Department and the General Services Administration released a request for information Thursday, asking energy suppliers how they expect to deliver on the administration’s goal of the federal government running 100% on carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is pressuring the Postal Service, an agency with one of the largest vehicle fleets in government, to make electric vehicles a greater part of its multibillion-dollar next-generation vehicle fleet contract.

These and other actions from the Biden administration underscore a full-court press to make its goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050 a reality.

However, agencies supportive of the administration’s agenda recognize there are significant challenges in meeting all of the green-governments goals in President Biden’s executive order signed in December.

DoD and GSA, under the RFI, are asking vendors for feedback on the feasibility of meeting the executive order’s targets, as well as identifying potential barriers or performance risks in reaching this goal.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said moving agencies completely to carbon pollution-free electricity will create more clean-energy jobs, and “put the country on the path toward a more resilient and sustainable future.”

“As a leader in procuring electricity for government, GSA is committed to working with DoD and other partner agencies to move us all toward sourcing 100% carbon pollution-free electricity,” Carnahan said.

The RFI states that the administration is interested in signing contracts lasting up to 10 years, with the goal of phasing carbon pollution-free electricity into its FY 2022 competitive retail procurements, and with contract deliveries that would begin in 2023.

The federal government, according to the RFI, may combine the green electricity procurement of several agencies,  “to achieve economies of scale, where appropriate.”

The RFI also asks current suppliers of energy to the federal government to outline how they plan to transition to carbon pollution-free electricity.

GSA and DoD will accept responses to the RFI through March 7.

Preferred energy sources outlined in the RFI include marine energy, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear and hydrokinetic.

“There is a preference for [carbon pollution-free electricity] supply to be from new or previously underutilized generation sources,” the RFI states.

GSA and DoD, as part of the RFI, are also requesting Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) or other accounting mechanisms from vendors to guarantee the electricity supplied is coming from a sustainable source.

The RFI states the federal government will also accept energy from fossil fuels, so long as “there is active capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions that meet EPA requirements.”

The agencies expect the executive order to result in U.S. energy companies supplying 10 gigawatts of new clean energy by 2030.

The federal government, between GSA and the Defense Logistics Agency, purchase more than 9 terawatt-hours of electricity every year.

DoD sees opportunities and limits to mitigating climate change

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the RFI shows the energy sector that DoD is “well underway” with efforts to meet the executive order’s goals.

DoD is the largest consumer of energy in the federal government, its largest emitter of greenhouse gases and one of the biggest buyers of electricity in the world.

“It’s not just critical to addressing the threat of climate change, but also to our national security as we work to secure U.S. competitiveness in rapidly-shifting global energy markets,” Hicks said.

Richard Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for energy & environment resilience, said  DoD views climate change as a threat to  readiness, and sees a need to reduce its greenhouse gases footprint to reduce the impact on its operations,

Kidd said DoD alone has a greenhouse gas footprint on par with Portugal, and is about the 55^th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.

“The federal government and the country do not get where it needs to be without contributions from the department,” Kidd said Wednesday during a meeting of the Defense Business Board.

DoD is working to not just mitigate the severity of climate change’s impact on its future readiness, but also to reduce the harm it’s already having on agency operations.

A longer and more intense season of wildfires means National Guard brigades are spending more time fighting wildfires and less time on combat training, Kidd said. He also said climate change is also expected to speed up the degradation of DoD’s aircraft, vehicles and installations.

Meanwhile, near-peer competitors like China are currently investing in plans to transition to clean-energy energy, but Kidd warns the United States isn’t “keeping pace.”

“This is not an either-or proposition, the department either prepares to fight or the department takes steps to adapt to climate change. If we do not adapt to climate change, it will adversely affect our readiness and our mission effectiveness,” Kidd said.

DoD issued a request for information this summer, asking its major suppliers about their targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the environmental impact of their supply chains.

Kidd said, at least anecdotally, companies who supply to DoD, but also do business internationally, particularly in Europe, “have a more robust and clearer understanding of their greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the Biden administration has linked its clean-energy goals up with its “Buy American” goals, Kidd said U.S. vendors are comparatively less familiar with the emissions embedded in their supply chains.

“Companies whose only business is in America, or primary business is America, and their primary customer is the Department of Defense, have a much less robust posture on climate change [and] greenhouse gas emissions,” Kidd said.

While DoD is taking steps where it can, Kidd said there are limits to where the agency can realistically reduce its carbon footprint.

“Realistically, the department is always going to have greenhouse gas emissions,” Kidd said, adding that DoD will most likely have to look at carbon capture and sequestration technologies at some point to minimize its impact.

More than two-thirds of DoD’s greenhouse gas emissions come from its operational force.

“It’s really a lot harder to think of a zero-emission F-35 counterpart, or zero-emission Marine taskforce or a zero-emission armored brigade combat team, so there’s a lot of challenges there,” Kidd said.

White House presses USPS on ‘critical opportunity to buy electric vehicles

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is warning it may hold up the Postal Service’s plans to acquire its next-generation fleet, over concerns that the agency is not making electric vehicles a top priority.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency, in separate letters to USPS, criticized the agency’s plans for most of its next-generation delivery vehicles to run on fossil fuels.

Both agencies also told USPS that the current environmental analysis of its contract award to Oshkosh Defense doesn’t give a complete picture of the environmental impact, and urged USPS to conduct a more thorough analysis.

EPA Associate Administrator Vicki Arroyo told USPS that its current plan to make electric vehicles 10% of its new fleet, at minimum, is “plainly inconsistent” with the administration’s goals.

“The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world,” Arroyo wrote.

The Postal Service’s vehicle fleet is second only to DoD, and accounts for nearly half of federal civilian vehicles.

CEQ Chairwoman Brenda Mallory, in her letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, said the agency’s contract marks a “critical opportunity” for electric vehicles to make up 70% of its total fleet.

“This available pathway would put USPS in a position to achieve dramatically positive effects for public health, climate crisis, and American competitiveness,” Mallory wrote.

Mallory said the White House is urging USPS to update its environmental review of its next-generation delivery vehicle contract, arguing that the current version does not give a full accounting of the expected environmental impact.

CEQ urged USPS to improve its next-generation vehicle fleet and make a decision that “that is grounded on sound legal footing.”

“If it does not do so, Congress or the federal courts may compel USPS to alter course,” Mallory said.

Arroyo said new USPS vehicles that run on gasoline would not “make meaningful progress” in reducing USPS greenhouse gases, and would only achieve 8.6 miles per gallon of gas. That’s only a slight improvement from the 8.2 miles per gallon average of its current fleet.

The EPA is also calling on USPS to accept public comments and hold public hearings about its next-generation vehicle contract.

Mallory said the administration “strongly backs” the $6 billion USPS would receive under the Build Back Better Act, which it would use to purchase more electric vehicles and charging stations.

That legislation, however, doesn’t have the support it needs in the Senate, and is unlikely to pass in its current form.

Mallory said the White House also supports USPS using its existing resources, “including its significant cash reserves,” to invest in more electric vehicles

USPS ended 2021 with more than $23 billion in cash.

“Through these approaches and others, we are confident that USPS has the tools it needs to act now,” Mallory wrote.

The Washington Post first reported on the CEQ and EPA’s letters to USPS on Wednesday.

Most American adults are worried about global warming but less than half believe it will affect them personally, 2020 opinion data shows. Support for investing in renewable energy and limiting carbon dioxide emissions is rising, as is the belief that the president should do more to address global warming.

On both of these counts, the Biden administration is moving ahead with the directives of the  “Climate-Related Financial Risk” executive order, released in May, in which the president called for a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 to help limit global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The new Federal Sustainability Plan released in December charges agencies to harness procurement authority to reach 100% carbon pollution-free energy at federal facilities by 2030. It also calls for an entirely zero-emission vehicle fleet by 2035, and a net-zero emissions building portfolio by 2045. It also sets interim goals in the years leading up to those deadlines.

The Plan was released in conjunction with President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability.” With this strategy, the Council on Environmental Quality in the Office of Management and Budget aims to scale up sustainability efforts and meet agencies where they are, according to Federal Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Mayock.

“In places like zero emission vehicles, where the federal government has traditionally purchased under 1% of vehicles as zero-emission vehicles, we’re seeking to scale that up dramatically. And we’re seeking to also, of course, provide the infrastructure of charging that goes along with that,” he said Wednesday. “And so there’s places across those circles in the plan’s design, where we’re moving out today, so that we get to those periods of 2030, 2027, it’s a climb up a measured slope, versus a moment in time that we need to get to over one year.”

Mayock was speaking during the first in a series of virtual talks with sustainability and climate change experts, aimed at the federal community. Wednesday’s guest was Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy and the Political Science endowed chair in Public Policy and Public Law at Texas Tech University.

Mayock said the Council on Environmental Quality asked agencies how far they could get on their own and how quickly. For some, 2027 was too long a deadline to transition their fleets, for example, and offered to plan for a 2024 or 2025 goal.

Hayhoe said she appreciated this tactic and asked Mayock, on behalf of the audience, both how federal employees could hold leadership accountable for executing climate change actions, and how employees can be more directly involved with the sustainability goals of the current administration.

He recommended finding out who the agency’s chief sustainability officer is — “It’s sometimes, and oftentimes, somebody who’s wearing a few hats” — and that over the past year he has seen a new enthusiasm for sustainability efforts. He added that having a player as big as the federal government set major procurement goals for zero-emissions technology and facilities will create an investment and incentive for those industries.

“When you have numerous corporate and public sector entities moving rapidly on the carbon-free electricity front, we’re creating a movement not only within the federal government. The federal government’s providing this huge signal to create that which will be very hard to reverse,” he said.

The Plan is divided into operating and enabling goals, the former including efforts such as net-zero emissions vehicle acquisitions by 2035 and a full net-zero emissions procurement by 2050. In this case, net zero is defined as reducing greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible, and balancing remaining emissions with an equivalent amount of emission removal, through natural carbon sinks, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, or other methods.

Enabling goals are vaguer, and include steps such as identifying human capital requirements for effective implementation of the Plan, and incorporate sustainability and climate action into existing federal trainings. These goals are driven less by yearly deadlines and more so by systemic change. Mayock asked Katherine how society could move in this direction and away from a mindset of personal responsibility when it comes to tackling climate change. She paraphrased environmentalist Bill McKibben to say, “the most important thing an individual can do is not be such an individual,” and recognize that systems are made up of individuals each capable of demanding such change.

Hayhoe said opinion surveys conducted by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication indicate the lack of general concern for climate change in the U.S. is not an issue — 63% of American adults are worried about global warming. However, only 43% believe the consequences will affect them personally. This disconnect between urgency and efficacy can mean the difference between taking action at all and becoming complacent. The data also shows support for investing in renewable energy setting limits on CO2 pollutants, and for initiatives undertaken by corporations, state and local governments. It starts by openly talking about the problem and meeting people where they are, Hayhoe said.

“I was asked when I was in Iowa a little while ago, they said, ‘How do you talk about polar bears in Iowa?’ And I said, you don’t; you talk about corn. You don’t talk about what’s happening somewhere else, you talk about what’s happening where you live,” she said. “In Texas, I talked about cotton … In California, I talk about wildfires. Anywhere in the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast or the Midwest, you talk about floods. Big cities, we talk about our health and air pollution and extreme heat.”

The Biden administration is setting a decades-long vision to eliminate carbon emissions from federal buildings and vehicles.

President Joe Biden, as part of an executive order he signed Wednesday, expects agencies to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all federal operations by 2050, including a 65% reduction by 2030.

The Biden administration expects the federal government’s purchasing power, as directed under this executive order, will support private industry’s capacity to produce electric vehicles and batteries, as well as accelerate job growth in sustainable manufacturing and engineering.

“As the single largest landowner, energy consumer, and employer in the nation, the federal government can catalyze private sector investment and expand the economy and American industry by transforming how we build, buy, and manage electricity, vehicles, buildings, and other operations to be clean and sustainable,” the executive order states.

A separate memo from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Management and Budget and Climate Policy Office states the administration is working guidance that, once released, will give agencies 90 days to set targets that will put them on a path to achieving the most of the executive order’s long-term goals.

The executive order builds on the administration’s priorities in the Build Back Better Act, which the House passed in November, but has yet to move forward in the Senate.

The infrastructure spending package would currently give the Postal Service $6 billion to invest in electric delivery vehicles and charging stations, and would give the General Services Administration $3 billion to purchase electric vehicles through September 2026.

The legislation also gives GSA more than $3 billion to improve energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings.

The executive order sets the goal of the federal government purchasing 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2035, and purchasing only zero-emission “light duty” vehicles by 2027.

The administration is directing all agencies to develop a zero-emission fleet strategy that addresses right-sizing their inventory of vehicles, purchasing more electric and zero-emission vehicles and developing charging stations and other necessary infrastructure.

This latest executive order builds on several other White House policies. President Joe Biden, in his first month in office, signed an executive order directing agencies to move the entire federal vehicle fleet to electric and zero-emission vehicles.

Administration officials, however, acknowledge agencies have a long way to go before moving the needle on the administration’s goals.

White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, the former EPA administrator under the Obama administration, said this summer that less than 1% of the federal fleet are plug-in electric vehicles and that agencies bought only 200 electric vehicles last year.

The EO directs agencies to make the federal building portfolio zero-emission by 2045, and reach a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2032, compared to baseline levels from 2008.  It also directs agencies to make federal buildings more energy and water-efficient,  as well as more resilient against climate change.

The EO also creates a Buy Clean Task Force, led by OMB and CEQ to promote the use of lower-emission construction materials.

The executive order directs agencies to transition to 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030, and ensure at least half of it comes from locally supplied clean energy sources.

To meet this goal, the administration is telling agencies to lease or otherwise leverage real-estate assets – such as rooftops, parking lots, garages and excess land — in ways that would produce clean energy.

The administration is also directing chief sustainability officers to make progress on the executive order’s goals. Biden in February appointed Andrew Mayock,  former Office of Management deputy director for management during the Obama administration, to serve as federal chief sustainability officer.

According to the Office of the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer, at least 50 agencies have their own chief sustainability officers.

The EO directs GSA to track greenhouse gas emissions, emissions reduction targets and other sustainability-related actions from major federal suppliers, and will work with CEQ to reduce emissions from the federal supply chain.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said the executive order gives the federal government an opportunity to reduce emissions and support clean energy industries.

“Right now we have a massive opportunity to create millions of clean energy jobs, save taxpayer money through reduced energy costs, and build a more sustainable future for generations of Americans,” Carnahan said. “Today’s actions demonstrate how GSA and our federal partners will move forward with a bold vision that meets this moment in history by harnessing the power of American ingenuity and innovation.”

The executive order also presents opportunities to train the federal workforce. It gives the Office of Personnel Management 90 days to create a report that outlines ways to expand environmental sustainability and climate adaptation training for federal employees.

The administration is telling OPM to consult with GSA, the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and federal employee unions in drafting the report.

GSA Deputy Administrator Katy Kale, speaking at the most recent National Climate Task Force meeting, said the agency will ensure its federal customers have the support they need to buy electricity, vehicles and services from sustainable sources.

“From day one, GSA has been excited about revitalizing governmentwide sustainability, and we are now positioned to help agencies reach these ambitious goals,” Kale said.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said the executive order builds on many of the clean-energy investments in the Build Back Better Act, and puts agencies on a path to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Today’s executive order leverages the federal government’s unique role as the nation’s largest employer and purchaser of goods and services to make real progress in the fight against climate change,” Maloney said. “As chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, I’ve fought to make key elements of the President’s climate plan a reality, from electrifying the federal fleet, to advancing green buildings and green procurement, to promoting environmental justice. The security of our country and future generations relies on a coordinated, whole-of-government response to the climate crisis.”

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Air traffic control towers have been central features of airports since the beginnings of aviation. Many of them have also become architectural landmarks. Now, the FAA is seeking new designs for control towers that are both functional and distinctive. Here with more, Project Engineer Zane Edwards and Contract Specialist ThuyLihn TranNguyen.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Great to have you both on.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Thank you.

Zane Edwards: Thank you, good morning.

Tom Temin: And tell us what the vision is you have here for this project, we’ll get into the contracting mechanism. But what are you trying to accomplish here? Because I thought, in your big cities, the towers are already, landmarks in many ways now.

Zane Edwards: That’s exactly right. So in a lot of our major airports, the ones that control sort of the flow of traffic through the [National Airspace System] – your Atlantas, your Chicagos, LAs – those airports have seen lots of investment, and they’re in really pretty good shape. We have over 500 control tower and radar facilities. And a bunch of these are in regional municipal airports, smaller airports, they haven’t seen the investment in recent history. A lot of them are over 40 to 50 years old. They haven’t reached their end of useful life, they’re getting close to it. And they really need some love, to be honest. So our vision is, with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passing, it’s gonna provide us with the big – we’re not exactly sure the amount of funding, but a much larger investment than we normally see through our appropriation process, and it’s going to allow us to hopefully replace around 100 of these sort of towers. So what we’re doing with this competition is we’re saying, hey, we’re going out to the industry, we’re really great in the FAA at replacing and designing single towers, one of the time we’ve done it in the in times, we’re great at it, that process is pretty well set. But we’re not geared to develop to do something at this scale, and this short of a timeframe. So we’re going out to industry saying, hey, we know you guys can help us. We really want to hear your innovative design ideas and construction ideas. Tell us how you do it and tell us how you could do it quickly?

Tom Temin: Well, one more question on that, because almost every airport is operated by a local or regional authority that is somehow connected to that state or local government. And it can get complicated if you’re talking about the big airports, but also the small ones. And so who is responsible for maintaining and the capital investment in those smaller airports? Is that a federal function or you have to work with those state and local authorities?

Zane Edwards: So it can be. So a lot of these facilities we do own and maintain, there are also a number of other that the airports own and will maintain. And there’s some of the airports only that they maintain. But there’s all sorts of different sort of agreements. And so we read at this point, we’re hoping to take the opportunity. And just from a portfolio perspective, say we have a chance to really improve the quality of the infrastructure.

Tom Temin: And Ms. TranNguyen, how are you going about this? That is to say, is it a challenge competition? Is it a contract? What do you have out there on the street right now?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Yeah, so what we’re currently doing, and we’re gonna release a full and open competition. So the company of any size is welcome to participate in the competition. We’re looking from that experience to no experience at all. If you’re great at designing, or you have just a knack for designing, and you could be a college student and you’re interested, feel free to participate. That’s what we’re looking for. Because there’s opportunities down the line in the different phases that we have that you can join with a more experienced firm, if you still happen to succeed and pass the [first step].

Tom Temin: And in general, what are the requirements you’re putting out there, I mean, it has to be a certain height, and it has to have windows all around. But beyond that, these are highly technical facilities. So what are some of the criteria that they have to meet in order to have a chance here?

Zane Edwards: For the first phase, what we’re really looking for is we’re looking for a conceptual design statement and conceptual execution statement. Both limited to five pages, high-level ideas, tell us how you would go about this problem, what you think the vision is to solve it, and how you would actually execute that vision to the end. So really, what we’ve been limited to, the first go-around, the phase one of this it’s = we want the towers to be 60-119 feet in height, adjustable in that sort of window. We want them to be rapidly constructible. We’re aiming for a 50-year lifespan. It does have to support a control cabinet. But at this point, we’re not providing any sort of specifics on control cabinets, we really are just trying to get the concepts and the idea is out there. We’re also very interested in sustainability, not just from an energy efficiency or water reduction sort of point of view. But can we do on site, renewable energy generation? What about lowering our carbon footprint with different construction materials, different construction types? So those are the things we’re sort of looking for in the upfront Phase One of the search.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with FAA Project Engineer Zane Edwards, and with Contract Specialist ThuyLihn TranNguyen, and you mentioned that there are phases to this program. So the first phase is a kind of downselect of the best designs and what do the awardees get to continue?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: So in this competition, we have three phases total. And for the first phase, as we discussed briefly, we’re requesting the offers to submit innovative design concept and execution approach that facilitates the rapid deployment of the new air traffic control tower. And in that phase, we’ll be selecting up to 15 successful offers, [then] proceed to phase two. And then in phase two in the request for the qualifications, the offers must submit a financial capability as well as past performance corporate experience of the proposed teaming arrangement. And in this phase, we will be selecting up to six successful offers to participate in phase three. And then lastly, in phase three, which is the request for offers, we are requesting offers to submit a 10% design as well as a conceptual construction deployment plan for multiple towers. And in this phase, we’re also asking for a cost proposal to advance the design to 50-80%. And or more offers may be selected for this phase, or there could be a potential that we may not select any offers at this phase.

Tom Temin: And the ultimate goal here is the same tower in all of the places that will be replaced, or is there some accommodation for regional variation? You might not want something that looks the same in New England, as in southwestern United States.

Zane Edwards: 100%. So we do recognize that we wanted to be adaptable, not just aesthetically, to make them look a little different, but also environmentally. We’re going to build these in northern Alaska, we’re going to build them in southern Florida. So you’re going to have different energy sort of uses, different insulating properties, different loadings – wind loading, seismic loading, high-snow loading, just depending where you are. We’ll have different foundation types. We recognize that so they need to be site adaptable.

Tom Temin: Got it. And here’s a detail question: Do control towers have, like bathrooms at the top level where the controllers are? Do they have to go down stairs and into a terminal or something?

Zane Edwards: That’s a legitimate question. I’m actually glad you brought that up. Because there is one nuance to control towers that I do want to sort of explain to people: So we spent a lot of money to build these buildings for the view, right? That’s the key. So we don’t want to put anything in the Cabinet that will obstruct the view – it’s a 360 sort of window to the sky to the airfield below. You control the movement areas and the planes approaching and departing. So there is a restroom one floor below. But what we do have is an exemption to the ABA, which is the American Barriers Act for accessibility to the cab and one floor below, right? So that we can’t bring the elevator overrun into the cab because it would block the view. So there’s no way to get people with accessibility needs into the cab. So the capital one floor below that there is an exemption for us.

Tom Temin: Interesting. Yeah, and with respect to the ability to sustain on-site energy, for example, generate energy, that’s a tough one too. Because you can’t put a windmill on top of a control tower, because then you’d have a big rotating shaft, where airplanes are flying. So that’s not an option. So maybe solar or that type of thing?

Zane Edwards: We have one net zero facility in Tucson, Arizona, which is photovoltaic. It’s got a pretty big PV farm. There are some idiosyncrasies with that – you got to make sure you’re not blinding the controllers with reflection. You gotta make sure not blinding the pilots with the reflection. But we do and even lots of airports themselves will – San Francisco is an example – heir parking garages are covered with PVs. Their terminal buildings are covered with PVs. So you can do that. We could also do geothermal types of things in different climates. So there are other ways to meet, maybe not necessarily net zero – there’s not there’d be very few facilities that we think we could achieve that on, but we can make them more sustainable. We can reduce energy consumption, and we can reduce – water reduction.

Tom Temin: And if you have on-site generation, by whatever means, then in some sense, then you’re more resilient because if the utility goes out, the tower doesn’t have to go out and therefore the airport, and the air traffic doesn’t have to go out.

Zane Edwards: Absolutely right. So resiliency is another thing we want people to consider. So one of the goals of the procurement is the – I always mess up the name of it, because they change it all the time – but it’s like the the high performance, sustainable federal building. And one of the tenants of that is resiliency. So we do want people to look at things like flooding, natural disaster, forest, fire, whatever, and take that into consideration in their design concept.

Tom Temin: And [ThuyLihn], give us a sense of the timelines here. So the final deliverable eventually will be a plan, financial and construction, correct, but not a tower itself?

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: So the “final” final will be the design itself, 50%-80%. And then we’ll be looking at the cost proposal to have it produced all the way to the 50%-80%. So that is what we’re looking for in phase three. And then the remainder, the 20%, we’re going to work with on another procurement to complete out the 20% based on the location of where the tower is going to be.

Tom Temin: So each tower or each, say, regional set of towers could have competitive bids for the actual construction down the line.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Correct. Possibility, but right now we’re focusing on this design procurements. So we’re not sure the strategy on the future of what those will be at the moment.

Tom Temin: And just a final question there. Some of the big airports do have distinctive towers that have become local landmarks. I’m thinking of Boston Logan, which is two big sticks with kind of a bridge in between them. And even in Washington – Reagan National is kind of an interesting looking tower. You can’t tell whether it’s a water tower or a missile site or an air traffic control tower. Are you looking for some sense of, I don’t know, playfulness or architectural distinction in these as well as clearly the critical function they perform?

Zane Edwards: Oh, absolutely. But we also want the offers be cognizant of there’s a balance between the economic and the aesthetic, right. So the cool thing about towers is they’re tall. They’re typically the tallest structure in these locations, these smaller towns. They’re visible for miles, super recognizable. So we want to not to be eyesores, right? So we don’t need to, I guess East Germany sort of construction, we would like to make them look a little better.

Tom Temin: Yeah. No Brutalist architects need apply.

Zane Edwards: Right, exactly, that’s a better way to phrase it.

Tom Temin: Alright. Zane Edwards is a project engineer on the program Integration and Support Team at the FAA. Thanks so much for joining me.

Zane Edwards: I’d like to leave you with one thought is sort of my pep speech to the industry: So you know, we’re looking for a 50-year lifespan on these buildings – architects, engineers, academics, this is your chance to put your stamp on the aviation industry for decades. So please, if anybody has any interest, check out the solicitation on the landing page and provide your thoughts. We really want to hear him.

Tom Temin: All right, you want to bring those constellations in for a safe landing. And a ThuyLihn TranNguyen is a contract specialist with the FAA. Thank you as well.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Thank you. And then if you’re interested, please, please register for SAM. That is my number one thing that I remind everyone of you’re not registered, register. So that you can participate. The beauty of this contract is that you get to be innovative, be fun, and we’re looking for that. So participate as much as you can and start by just registering for SAM.gov

Tom Temin: Sam – no longer beta – .gov.

ThuyLihn TranNguyen: Correct, no longer beta.

A total of 23 federal agencies released new climate change strategies, part of their response to a January executive order from President Joe Biden. The order called on agencies to ensure they’re prepared for the ever-evolving impacts of climate change, from the risks severe weather might have on their facilities to the vulnerabilities such events might pose on federal employees and their ability to do their jobs.

The National Climate Task Force, White House Council on Environmental Quality’s, federal chief sustainability officer and the Office of Management and Budget have all reviewed the agency climate strategies.

“As part of these efforts, agencies will embed adaptation and resilience planning and implementation throughout their operations and programs, and will continually update their adaptation plans,” the White House said in a fact sheet describing the new strategies.

Agencies described a wide variety of risks that climate change might pose on their operations, plus steps they’re taking to mitigate them.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, estimated it may need more than $2 billion in emergency funding every 7-10 years to replace or repair facilities damaged by major hurricanes and other storms. It used its experiences with Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as the basis for setting that projection.

To mitigate potential damage to VA facilities, the department will reinstate climate resilience standards when analyzing the best way to repair, improve or replace buildings. The department said those standards were rescinded in 2017.

As the agency that releases federal employees in the national capital region, the Office of Personnel Management said it will review how weather events might impact the government’s operating status.

The Environmental Protection Agency will update the decision support tools its employees use to predict the probability of flooding and runoff.

The Department of Homeland Security set a goal of electrifying half of its fleet by 2030.

And the Education Department’s chief information officer is brainstorming ideas for reducing IT energy usage, which include, as an example, limiting the amount of IT equipment given to each employee, according to the agency’s plan.

Many agencies have designated their deputy secretaries as “chief resilience officers,” the White House said. DHS named its deputy undersecretary for management as the agency’s chief sustainability officer. OPM designated its chief management officer as the “senior climate change adaptation official.”

Multiple agencies described plans to improve “climate literacy” among their employees. DHS said it would develop an education plan for its workforce, while OPM is looking for more opportunities to embed climate adaptation and resiliency training into its professional and leadership development curricula for employees and executives.

OPM also said it will support the administration’s climate change initiatives by helping other agencies leverage telework and other workplace flexibilities, which it sees as a way to ultimately reduce the federal footprint and limit traffic and congestion.

In addition, OPM is working with the White House Council on Environmental Quality to develop a new program, known as the Sustainability Executives Program. This program would bring climate experts from the private sector, non-profit space and academia into federal agencies to help them “solve complex problems related to the climate crisis,” according to the OPM plan.

The agency will launch the new program sometime in fiscal 2022 with a small number of executives at a few departments.

The General Services Administration has a number of initiatives underway to help agencies in preparing their facilities for the impacts of climate change, and it too described a need to educate its customers about this field.

It has a lot of ground to cover.

“GSA has made concerted efforts to build climate literacy with Public Building Service and its customers,” the agency’s plan reads. “However, significant confusion remains around the difference between climate mitigation and adaptation. The administration’s priority on climate change increases demand and the pace required for providing federal buildings with the appropriate levels of adaptive capacity and resilience. There is little time to build understanding of climate risks in PBS and its customer agencies, and this gap could slow the overall progress of addressing climate vulnerabilities to real property.”

Beyond the education efforts, GSA is collecting more data about flooding risks to federal facilities and updating its building assessment tool, which identifies, describes and prioritizes climate change risks.

The Public Building Service will consider including climate risk as a factor in its federal facility location policies, GSA added.

OMB and the Council on Environmental Quality will collect feedback on all of these agency climate plans. The public can submit comments until Nov. 6.

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It’s a rare time when an agency has money and momentum to pursue true change and innovations. But that is exactly what Robin Carnahan believes she has as the new administrator of the General Services Administration.

In her first interview since being confirmed by the Senate about six weeks ago, Carnahan detailed her initial thinking about how to take advantage of this rare opportunity.

“We have that now to help the government deliver better, and we’re going to make the most of it,” Carnahan said in an exclusive interview with Federal News Network. “GSA is a service delivery agency, and it’s our job to figure out how to deliver that good service for customers and look out for the taxpayers while doing it. I’m also interested in empowering the GSA staff with whatever tools they need to do their best work. There are a number of challenges. I think probably the biggest challenge and opportunity I’ll say is helping partners rethink the future of work and what the workplace is going to look like going forward, and help them reimagine what that could look like in ways that are secure and equitable and inclusive and put customers right at the center of things.”

Federal buildings and office space is the first area where Carnahan pointed to the money and momentum.

The momentum comes from how agencies are rethinking what the federal office will look like as employees return and continue to work in a hybrid environment.

Carnahan said this means helping agencies “right size their footprint,” and developing other offerings like “home office in a box” to help employees work wherever they are.

“Folks are looking about the their footprints and figuring out how to reassess who is teleworking and who’s going to be in the office and what that combination looks like,” she said. “GSA is in the middle of all of those conversations, both within our own agency, but governmentwide too. We’re on the task forces with OMB and OPM looking at these issues.”

Time to rejigger federal office space

Another reason for the momentum is 60% of GSA’s leases for office space are set to expire between fiscal 2019 through 2023 — as of 2018. The agency expected about a third of Washington, D.C., leases to expire between 2019 and 2020. The National Capital Region is part of GSA Region 11, which has the most rentable square footage nationwide.

All of these factors, and several others, are giving GSA momentum to rethink so much about federal real estate.

Many times, agencies have the momentum, but not the money.

Carnahan said the money is there, too, for GSA to pursue real improvements.

“We have lots of priorities when it comes to real estate. One of the major things that we’re focused on is the backlog and maintenance,” she said. “There’s money available in the Federal Buildings Fund and we are talking a lot to our partners on the Hill about how to access that so we can maintain our public buildings in ways that make them safe and attractive for folks to be working in. We also have this consolidation question that is just hanging over everyone’s agency as they rethink the future of work.”

The House passed version of the consolidated spending bill for fiscal 2022 gives GSA more than $8.7 billion through the Federal Buildings Fund to spend on federal building maintenance and repairs.

“I am making the cases as strongly as I can that we are doing a disservice to the public and to taxpayers if we allow our federal building assets to fall into disrepair. It’s as simple as that,” Carnahan said. “We have a backlog of maintenance needs and it is the responsibility of people in public office to make decisions about how to allocate that we know what those needs are. We’re making the case strongly in Congress. I’ll continue to do that.”

Carnahan added that the money and momentum also gives GSA the opportunity to reimagine federal office space more broadly than just the pandemic. She said a team from across the agency is focused on how the open office concept could be “rejiggered a little bit.”

Leaning on her experience at 18F

The second area where the money and momentum are around acquisition and technology.

For these parts of GSA’s mission, the money is coming through things like the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) and the Federal Citizen Services Fund. Congress allocated $1 billion for the TMF in the American Rescue Plan Act and the House added another $50 million to the TMF in its fiscal 2022 spending bill. In the FCSC, the House approved $59.2 million, which is $4 million more than 2021.

The momentum comes from the excitement created across the government to tap into the TMF as well as GSA’s own improvements over the last several years to address long-standing technology debt in the Federal Acquisition Service.

Carnahan came from that side of GSA where she ran 18F’s state and local consulting practice for four years.

But she also is quick to point out that she isn’t a technologist or an acquisition expert, but someone who has experience managing large organizations, including being the Secretary of State for Missouri.

“I learned a lot of lessons while I was there, about the importance of technology, the importance of procurement, things that you don’t always think about when you think about government service delivery. But it turns out, if you don’t get those, right, you can’t provide effective service to the public,” she said. “What I was able to do at 18F was to dig deeper into those issues on somebody wants to government to work well. It turns out technology and procurement have to get fixed if you’re going to have government work well. That time at 18F helped me understand the scale of the problem.”

She said she worked closely with trained technologists to identify cost effective ways to address the challenges of improving government services. She also spent a lot of time helping non-technical government leaders communicate and translate their policy priorities and objectives into how to effectively implement those through technology and delivery.

“Those are really, really valuable lessons that I am using every day in this job as administrator,” she said. “One of the things we saw through the last year is that you could pass a policy in Washington, but if you can’t implement it, it doesn’t have the same effect for people if they can’t see the result. So that’s why the implementation role that GSA plays and supporting our agency partners and implementing through technology or anything else is so important.”

Carnahan didn’t offer any specific plans or priorities around technology and acquisition. She did say supply chain risk management and current efforts around Section 889 remain a top priority for her as it does for the Biden administration.

Data drives decisions, goals

Her focus is more on improving GSA’s service deliver to its agency and industry partners.

“My goal here is to make sure that is as good as it can be as an experience for customers, and our business partners and industry partners. In fact, I’ve said a bunch to the team, that what I’d really like is for anybody who’s interacting with GSA, whether it’s walking in a building online, on the phone, wherever it is to say, ‘Wow, that was a great experience. I wish everything in government could work that well.’ That is my goal here,” Carnahan said. “I know that in order to achieve that we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to keep talking to customers. We’ve got to talk to industry partners. We need to understand how we’re doing now and how we can integrate their feedback and keep improving. The bottom line is I want to make it as easy as possible for our agency partners to buy and access what they need good services, workspace technology through GSA, and I want to make it as easy as possible for our industry partners, especially small businesses, to sell through GSA. That’s my bottom line.”

She also said these decisions for how to apply the money to meet the momentum will be based on data.

“I’m very interested in feedback from both customers and our, our industry partners, we’ve got to have both sides of those customers. We’ve got to get it right. I tend to be very data driven, and results and impact driven. You can only get that if you have both sides of that equation that are at the table and trying to figure out how to get the best results,” Carnahan said. “My expectations for GSA are to be a place for great customer service and an empowered workforce that is able to do their best work. Those are the two things I’m going to be focused on. And I’m going to talk about over and over again till people get sick of it.”

The House has officially suggested it will go along with the president’s proposed 2.7% federal pay raise for civilian employees in 2022, according to a draft bill appropriators released Wednesday.

The bill, which the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government easily advanced Thursday morning, makes no mention of a federal pay raise for General Schedule employees next year.

In their silence, House appropriators have essentially deferred to the plan President Joe Biden offered in his budget request last month. He recommended a 2.7% average federal pay raise for civilian employees in 2022, with no details on how locality adjustments might factor into the mix.

Active-duty military members are also on track for a 2.7% pay raise next year.

A 2.7% federal pay raise would be more than the 1% bump employees received this year, but less than the 3.1% increase the workforce got back in 2020.

A group of House and Senate Democrats has introduced legislation that would give employees a 3.2% federal pay raise next year.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) previewed the House’s plans Tuesday at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association’s virtual conference.

She also suggested the Senate was interested in providing a 2.7% pay raise as well, but it’s unclear when exactly appropriators in the other chamber might formally weigh in on the matter.

Of course, a lot can change between now and the end of the year on federal pay, and employee unions and organizations are hopeful either Congress or the White House will adopt the proposed raise from House and Senate Democrats.

“Certainly the White House’s 2.7% proposal is a welcome start to the debate over what federal employees deserve next year, but there is plenty of time for the administration and Congress to reconsider and give frontline federal workers an average 3.2%,” Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said Thursday in a statement.

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) Association said it too was discouraged that House appropriators provided only a silent endorsement of the president’s proposed pay raise.

“It’s disappointing that House lawmakers failed to provide clear support for our nation’s public servants with explicit language in the appropriations bill,” Ken Thomas, NARFE national president, said Thursday in a statement. “This leaves federal employees in a precarious position. Now they must rely solely on President Biden to uphold a promise made in his budget request, rather than their elected representatives in Congress to secure a market-based pay increase. Civil servants remain dependent on the uncertain outcome of bipartisan, bicameral budget negotiations without any clear congressional support for their dedication to serving our nation.”

The White House must submit an alternative pay plan to Congress by the end of August, and the president must make any adjustment official through an executive order, which typically comes near the end of the calendar year.

The House’s draft bill maintains a pay freeze for the vice president and certain political appointees and executives.

Notably, the bill removes a long-held prohibition on abortion services in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, a point of controversy for House Republicans.

The legislation also blocks agencies from prohibiting the use of official time or telework “when the health or safety of an employee is in question.” It also prevents agencies from using federal funds to deny employees office space for “union activities,” seemingly a direct response to the executive orders former President Donald Trump signed back in 2018 that Biden has since repealed.

Under the 2022 House proposal, the IRS would see a $1.7 billion funding boost in 2022, with a significant portion going toward taxpayer services, enforcement and the agency’s IT modernization needs.

The bill also includes $42 million more for the Office of Personnel Management over 2021 levels. OPM is still recovering from the loss of its former security clearance business, which brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue to the agency before the Defense Department took over the portfolio back in 2019.

The Office of Management and Budget would see a $16.3 million budget increase, while the National Cyber Director would get $15 million to stand up its new office.

The Executive Office of the President would get $4.5 million to pay their interns.

The House’s 2022 draft bill also includes several new provisions aimed at improving budget transparency. One provision, for example, requires OMB to publicly disclose the apportionment of appropriations — and gives the agency $1 million to create an automated system that documents those activities.

Other provisions require agencies to provide the Government Accountability Office with budget and appropriations information more quickly.

In addition, the 2022 draft bill allows the General Services Administration to spend $10.4 billion through the Federal Buildings Fund, with $254 million for the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters consolidation at St. Elizabeths.

The House proposal also dedicates $300 million to electrify the federal fleet, a key Biden administration climate initiative.

The 2022 draft bill, again, tries to create a new Commission on Federal Naming and Displays, which would review and recommend name changes to federal properties that are “inconsistent with the values of diversity, equity and inclusion.” The commission would create a list of recommended changes and submit them for the president’s consideration.

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Green may be the General Services Administration new favorite color. And it’s not about money — this time.

GSA is re-energizing its commitment to green government across its entire portfolio of products and services. The agency further outlined its plans to do its part to battle climate change as required under President Joe Biden’s January executive order.

“One thing that is really important to us at GSA across the board is to be looking at how we can decarbonize our entire supply chain,” said Sonal Kemkar Larsen, the senior adviser to the GSA administrator on climate, during a press briefing on April 20. “We procure a lot of different things: Energy, buildings, government goods and vehicles. In all of those, we need to look at our supply chains, the manufacturers, the businesses we are working with all the way to the design and installation in all of this. There is carbon from the beginning to the end so decarbonization is going to be a big lift as we look across the supply chain. A new focus for us is to look across all aspects of procurement.”

The January order made climate change a national security issue and gave nearly every agency some sort of responsibility.

For example, GSA is one of several members of the National Climate Task Force.

There also is an entire section on using the federal buying power to address climate change, which is where a lot of GSA’s efforts will come into play.

GSA must deliver a plan around clean energy vehicles and green electricity. Its plan was due in April, but the White House extended the deadline to May 27. GSA said they are working on that plan and another one around sustainability that will be out later this summer.

Under the executive order, GSA has to address how it will help achieve:

• A carbon pollution-free electricity sector no later than 2035;
• Clean and zero-emission vehicles for federal, state, local, and tribal government fleets, including vehicles of the United States Postal Service;
• Any additional legislation needed to accomplish these objectives; and
• Ensuring that the U.S. retains the union jobs integral to and involved in running and maintaining clean and zero-emission fleets, while spurring the creation of union jobs in the manufacture of those new vehicles.

Two of the biggest focus areas will be around buildings and the fleet of vehicles.

But over the last decade, GSA’s efforts, and really the government writ large, has fallen behind. The progress it made with green government has seriously waned.

Investments in facility efficiency improvements fell by nearly 75% between 2010 and 2019 while renewable electricity usage — which had been on the rise from 2010 to 2016 — declined steadily through 2019. Reductions in governmentwide building energy intensity stagnated over the last four years, which lawmakers have noticed.

Members of multiple climate, energy and oversight committees sent a letter on Jan. 26 to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate agency noncompliance with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The letter said that only 21% of buildings covered by the law underwent comprehensive energy and water evaluations, and only 12% are benchmarked.

Two new green building task forces

GSA is taking several steps to reenergize these efforts.

Katy Kale, the acting GSA administrator, said the Federal Green Building Advisory Committee stepped out in front soon after the EO and created two new task forces — the federal building decarbonization task group and the environmental justice and equity task group.

“The decarbonization task group will explore opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in buildings in the federal real estate portfolio through the use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, electrification and smart building technologies. They will provide some recommendations to GSA this fall so we can begin to develop a roadmap for the decarbonization of federal buildings,” Kale said. “The environmental justice and equity task group will improve engagement with diverse communities and key partners throughout design, construction, operations, renewal and occupancy. We believe this engagement will lead to increased inclusion, opportunities and green jobs in the federal sustainability building process.”

The greening of buildings is a huge opportunity for GSA. The agency said 60% of its leases held are set to expire between fiscal 2019 through 2023. This is the perfect opportunity to push for more green buildings.

“When we are talking about decarbonization in buildings, it’s all of the things that we need to do to reduce and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by the operation of the building. That could include replacing gas boilers with solar hot water or using ground source heat pumps,” Kale said. “Really we need to make sure we are including every efficiency measure that we can, including using smaller, more local equipment for heating and cooling, making sure motors are high efficiency motors, adjusting control strategies to reduce peak loads. It’s A to Z, we’ve got everything covered.”

Like buildings, GSA has huge opportunities through the vehicles it manages.

GSA currently oversees 670,000 cars and trucks, most of which agencies own. It also manages more than 200,000 vehicles that are leased.

The investment in clean energy vehicles started several years ago and GSA said its fleet already includes 16 types of battery operated vehicles and 5 plug in hybrid electric vehicles.

Charlotte Phelan, the assistant commissioner for the Office of Travel, Transportation and Logistics in the Federal Acquisition Service, said the fleet is more than just cars but trucks and even school buses.

“The biggest challenge that we are looking at is actually the charging infrastructure. We need to deploy electric vehicle infrastructure to make sure we are able to do large scale vehicle deployment while also ensuring agencies are able to accomplish their mission,” Phelan said. “That, to me, will probably be the most complicated part of it.”

Phelan added GSA hosted roundtables with automotive and charging industries to learn about vehicles and charging infrastructure technology in March. She said a new plan to address this challenge will be out in the next few months.

Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of the FAS, said the long-term goal is to get to zero emissions over the next several years.

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• The General Services Administration has a goal to use renewable electricity for the entire federal real estate portfolio by 2025. GSA said it’ll continue to eliminate fossil fuel use in newly constructed buildings with the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2030. The agency also launched a Federal Building Decarbonization Task Group. The group will explore alternative energy methods and set climate action plans for federal buildings. The Department of Homeland Security launched its own climate change action group which Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said will refocus and elevate DHS climate change activities.
• Federal employees who volunteer to serve temporary details at the southern border are eligible for a special premium pay exception. The Office of Personnel Management said it will waive the usual biweekly cap on premium pay for employees working with the Department of Health and Human Services and its unaccompanied children program. That means employees have the potential to earn more overtime for their work at the border than they would during normal circumstances. OPM said it usually waives the biweekly premium pay cap for work in connection with an emergency.

• Biden’s pick to lead the Office of Personnel Management said she’ll restore, rebuild and retool the federal workforce. Kiran Ahuja said she’ll bring something to OPM that the agency hasn’t usually had in recent years: Leadership and stability. “I commit to being there as long as I have the support of all of you and President Biden, because I do think it’s going to be needed,” she said. OPM has had a revolving door of acting and permanent directors during the last two administrations. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is supposed to vote on Ahuja’s nomination next week. (Federal News Network)

• Biden’s three nominees to the postal board pledged to put service first. The three nominees appeared yesterday in a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They included Ron Stroman, a former deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, who leads a nonprofit devoted expanding voting from home; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union. They promised to restore trust in the Postal Service by improving service. The committee did not vote on the nominees. (Federal News Network)

• The president nominated a seasoned environmental advocate to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Tracy Stone-Manning of Missoula, Montana, spent the past four years at the National Wildlife Federation, and she is a former aide to Democratic Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.). If confirmed, she would oversee over about a 250 million acres of public land and one-third of the nation’s underground minerals, including huge reserves of oil, natural gas and coal. The Bureau of Land Management will play a key role in President Biden’s climate change policy. (Federal News Network)

• The Pentagon also released a plan to combat climate change. As part of President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate yesterday, the Defense Department announced its plan to complete climate exposure assessments on all major U.S. installations within a year, and all overseas installations within two years, using the Defense Climate Assessment Tool, or DCAT. DoD said the tool will be used to identify potential climate hazards to which these installations are most exposed.

• A Pentagon panel said the decision to prosecute service members for sexual assault should be made by independent authorities — not commanders. The advice of the advisory group, which was stood up by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, goes against decades of Defense Department precedent to keep sexual assault cases within the chain of command. The Defense Secretary said he will seek input from military service leaders before making any final decision. Austin has made combating sexual assault in the military a cornerstone issue. (Federal News Network)

• To encourage people to work in public service, the federal government offered student loan forgiveness in exchange for ten years of public employment. But very few Defense Department employees have tried to use the program and even fewer have managed to get approved. A new study by the Government Accountability Office found DoD isn’t doing much to promote the loan forgiveness program as a way to recruit new talent, nor is it telling its workforce how to apply. That might explain why only about 5,000 employees have tried to get their loans forgiven since the program’s inception in 1997. Out of those that did apply, fewer than 300 have been approved.

Widespread telework has been so successful — and is expected to continue even after the virus subsides — that it’s prompted a tricky question: Does the federal government still need this much real estate, or can it downsize?

Remote work can help some agencies reduce their property footprint, and their carbon footprint, as Federal News Network reported in part 2 of its special report, Building Back Greener. IT innovations helped agencies administer a myriad of operations from bioengineering to small business recovery programs.

For example, at the National Nuclear Security Administration, “you can do most of your work on the low-side at home from a regular desktop or a laptop, and you come into the facility to do whatever classified activity you have to do,” Lewis Monroe, the agency’s director of human resources, told Federal News Network in November.

Monroe said most workers only spend about 10% of their week accessing classified material. As for NNSA’s parent agency, the Energy Department has the fourth-largest inventory of real property by square footage in the federal government: 130 million square feet, which costs about $2.6 billion in maintenance and operations annually. DOE has been looking for ways to reduce, consolidate or eliminate underutilized space over the past nearly 20 years. It purged 22.9 million gross square feet from fiscal 2002 to fiscal 2018, and its target for 2024 is a net reduction of 752,600 square feet of office and warehouse space compared to now, according to DOE’s Real Property Efficiency Plan.

Other employees considering sticking with telework post-pandemic include those in the finance offices. The Association of Government Accountants’ Annual CFO Survey revealed that chief financial officers expect to spend more on IT to handle greater network demand, but also need less real estate and to utilize more hotelling models.

But eventually, worksites will need to reopen. Furthermore, as agency missions grow, so too will their real estate needs. What remains unclear is how that will look, and whether agencies reopen in a more environmentally sustainable way.

Telework’s costs — and benefits

Embracing more remote work is saving private sector companies money, leading some lawmakers to ask agencies to consider the idea. Back in the summer, when the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing on lessons learned from pandemic telework, Kate Lister, president of consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics, used the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as examples.

In 2019 SSA reported $900 million in annual real estate savings, while USPTO reported $52.1 million, and an almost 100-million-mile reduction in vehicle miles traveled. Meanwhile, the General Services Administration saw a 40% reduction in space, $25 million in annual real estate savings, $6 million in administrative cost savings and a 50% reduction in energy due to telework usage, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s 2018 and 2019 Telework Reports to Congress.

Lister predicted the federal government could save about $110 billion over the next decade if it used more telework — without harming productivity — based on a 25% reduction in office space and having currently eligible employees teleworking half the time.

Greater telework also means less commuting and thus fewer vehicle emissions. But there is a flip side: It puts public and shared transportation in a precarious situation.

Speaking to the Environmental and Public Works Committee, Michael Benjamin, chief of the Air Quality Planning and Science Division for the California Air Resources Board, said that fewer people commuting to work means less ridership on transit systems. This means lower fare revenues that force those systems to reduce or eliminate service, which then makes them less reliable or desirable for riders.

“The immediate observed decreases in public transit use and shared or pooled services have led to an increase in personal vehicle use when travel does occur, and could lead to a preference for personal vehicle use longer-term, reversing observed gains in air quality and congestion,” Benjamin told the committee.

Indeed, the Washington, D.C. metro area, which is not transporting nearly as many federal workers today as it did at the start of 2020, saw rail and bus ridership plummet by about 71% and 74% last year, respectively. And before the system received approximately $610 million in the last COVID relief package, it planned budget-related layoffs and service cuts for the rest of 2021.

“Furthermore, for many essential workers, public transit is often the only transportation option. Surveys have shown that currently, more than 90% of riders are using transit to commute to work, with more than 20% employed in health care services and almost 20% in food preparation,” Benjamin said. As such, he called for continued investment in public transit systems.

And not everyone can telework — about 42% of federal employees were eligible in 2018, and even then just 51% of those did. That worked out to only 22% of all federal employees teleworking in 2018, according to OPM. The 2020 telework report to Congress has not been released yet, but considering the government’s operating status has been in yellow for a year now, and some agencies like the Agriculture Department are examining flexible workspace options, it’s safe to say the feasibility of widespread telework looks different now.

Whatever worksites agencies keep open will likely have stricter standards on their ventilation systems. A GSA spokesperson said the agency wants to optimize space when workers return while still following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to upgrade air filtration, which impacts building energy use. If the building is only half-occupied but heating and ventilation systems are tied to central plant equipment that cannot adjust its time schedules, that gets expensive, commercial real estate blog iOptimize Reality wrote.

“The safety of the public, federal occupants and contractors will continue to be our primary driver,” the GSA spokesperson said.

At least agencies in the national capital region have some time to make arrangements, because in-office activity there is not fully resuming just yet.

D.C. office vacancies were at a record high by the fourth quarter of 2020: 15.8%, according to commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle. Two of the company’s employees, Art Russell and Lucy Kitchin, called it a “buyer’s market.” They said it was an ideal environment for consolidated leases and shifting away from stopgap leases to longer-term agreements for GSA.

“In terms of deals, right now in terms of government leasing, I’d say owners who typically had private sector folks, now want government leases,” Russell said on Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “That makes competition go up. And it makes concession packages go up as well.”

What the last recovery can teach government about going green

As Kitchin pointed out, commercial real estate was more central to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act after the Great Recession than it was in the CARES Act. The pandemic may have put many private sector sustainability goals on hold while financial futures were uncertain, but back in the fall Jones Lang LaSalle’s chief sustainability officer Richard Batten said these goals will be a crucial part of the economic recovery.

“COVID-19 heightened the need for resilience,” he said. “Not just the operation of the buildings and transportation but also for the people working, living and thriving in our cities. COVID-19 proved what existed previously just did not work; it proved we all need to build back better, build back greener.”

The company’s 2020 year end round up of data trends also said demand for green data center solutions showed no sign of slowing down.

The IEA also advocated keeping energy efficiency, sustainability programs and technology readiness top of mind in any pandemic stimulus plan, not just to further environmental goals, but also to boost employment.

That kind of thinking is behind the GSA Resilient, Energy Efficient, and Net-Zero (GREEN) Building Jobs Act of 2021, which Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) reintroduced Thursday. The bill requires agencies to lease spaces in buildings that in the most recent year earned the Energy Star label and obtained a green building certification from GSA, with some exceptions. The bill also requires lessors to disclose energy and water consumption data for whatever portion of the building agencies occupy.

“We think that now [telework] will be a much more significant part of federal work options. And that means, yes, our footprint on the need of spaces should be dramatically reduced,” Cardin said on Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “And I think going forward, we need to put that into the equation that will help the taxpayers of this country and will also make federal government services much more efficiently provided.”

In the House on Thursday, fellow Marylander John Sarbanes (D) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) also introduced the Federal Building Clean Jobs Act, which would authorize more than $4.7 billion in renovations to modernize federal buildings through retrofits, energy efficiency upgrades and green engineering designs.

The recent $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for COVID-19 relief did not include as much funding for green energy as it did for mass transit or addressing local level disparities in pollution. But back in the 2009 during the Great Recession, that stimulus package gave GSA $5.5 billion to make federal buildings greener and more energy efficient.

Now it’s the Biden administration’s turn, and chasing the right metrics will be key for economic recovery, said Dan Mathews, former commissioner of the Public Buildings Service.

“There’s a strategy to drive energy consumption down, better meet the real estate needs of the tenant agencies and lower the total cost,” he said. “It takes a fair amount of know-how in the real estate world to execute a strategy like that. And it’s pretty easy to go chase, what I would argue is wasteful projects — projects that you don’t really need, or projects that will spend a lot of money upgrading a building that’s half empty.”