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Dive Brief:
- The US Department of Energy is awarding 149.9 million dollars in 67 janconservation rgy and clean energy projects at federal government facilities in the US and abroad, the agency said on 29 October.
- The awards would be administered through the Assistance to federal facilities with the energy conservation technology grant program. Selected agency projects will leverage nearly $1.6 billion in combined federal funding and private capital to deploy energy conservation and clean energy technologies such as solar photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, battery energy storage systems, microgrids and building automation systems, DOE said.
- “AFFECT is the key to deploying innovation and underutilized technology across the federal territory [facility] portfolio”, DOE Deputy Director of the Federal Energy Management ProgramDirector Anna Siefken said last Wednesday at an award ceremony. “With the funding we have now, the agencies have the opportunity to continue to be at the forefront of the clean energy transition.”
Diving knowledge:
The awards represent the second and final tranche of $250 million allocated under the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the AFFECT program, which aims to help the federal government achieve President Joe Biden’s net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
The second tranche of AFFECT funding is significantly larger than the first, which allocated about 104 million dollars to energy conservation and clean energy projects at 31 federal sites in January. Application volumes doubled since the first phase of the program, with more than $1 billion in funding being applied for by agencies this year, more than ever before in AFFECT’s 10-year history AFFECT, according to DOE.
The selected projects will be saved 41.7 million dollarsn annually in energy and water costs, generate annual energy savings of more than 800 billion British thermal units, equal to 35,701 homes and eliminate 81,388 metric tons of CO2 equivalent each year, said DOE. The awarded projects will also conserve more than one billion gallons of water annually and generate 176,383 megawatt-hours of clean electricity annually, DOE said.
The projects will benefit facilities managed by the General Services Administration, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Transportation and the National Nuclear Security Administration, among others federal agencies. A full list of selected projects and award-winning agencies can be found here on the project description web page.
A grant will equip a US Coast Guard yard in Baltimore with one geothermal heat pump system for building heating and cooling and a new electric microgrid powered by a biogas combined heat and power plant, solar photovoltaic systems and a battery energy storage system, the DOE said. The Coast Guard project “will serve as a model for future installations on how to improve efficiency, implement electrification and use multiple renewable energy sources to achieve net zero goals,” said AFFECT program leader Tyler Harris last Wednesday at the DOE announcement event.
A National Nuclear Security Administration facility in Livermore, Calif., will channel funding to expand the site’s existing solar PV capacity to 9.4 MW, increase battery energy storage capacity to 2 MWh and will add a geothermal heat pump system. The project will generate more than half of the facility’s electricity from carbon-free sources, while reducing scope 1 and 2 emissions by 55% from 2008 levels and improving energy resilience, according to DOE.
The Livermore project will save $20.8 million “over the life of the contract,” Harris said.
Another grant cited at the event will support recycling and reuse over 600 million gallons of wastewater each year at Fort Bliss and William Beaumont Army Medical Center near El Paso, Texas. The project includes a new wastewater treatment facility with 2 million gallons per day capacity, two new water wells and a new water pipeline that will help reduce the desert base’s reliance on the region’s stressed aquifer and maintain its access to water even during municipal water outages. said DOE.
The AFFECT grants aim to “promote, even boost, the project[s] that otherwise might have taken a back seat,” while demonstrating more nascent clean energy and conservation technologies, FEMP Director Mary Sotos said during the announcement last Wednesday.
In addition, the second tranche of AFFECT grants places more emphasis on equity considerations, with about 30 percent of awarded projects located in or near disadvantaged communities, Sotos said.
“We know that federal agencies provide services to many of these communities,” Sotos said. “[We are] not just here to buy stuff for agencies, but to create change.”
