² The author thanks Nancy Carlisle, Joel Stronberg, Karl Rábago, Jean Wilson, Alan Miller, Roby Roberts, Adam Serchuk and Ber-nard Moore for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. The views expressed are the author’s, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of REPP, its Board of Directors or the reviewers.
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³ See, for example, Matthew L. Wald, “New Postal Trucks Can Run on Ethanol, But Probably Won’t,” New York Times, 4 October 1998.
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⁴ U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Information Administration (EIA), Annual Energy Review 1996, DOE/EIA-0384(96) (July 1997), p. 26; DOE, EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 1997, DOE/EIA-0383(97) (December 1996).
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⁵ DOE, EIA, Renewable Energy Annual 1997, Vol. 1, DOE/EIA-0603(97)/1 (February 1998). EIA estimates that approximately 26.9 billion kWh of electricity were generated by biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind facilities owned by the industrial (including PURPA qualifying facilities) and utility sectors in 1995.
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⁶ Federal data from Seth Hamblin, “The Government’s Property,” The Washington Post, 23 March 1999. State and local data from Doug Gatlin, “Energy Upgrades in State-owned Buildings,” presentation at EPA-NASEO SIPs Workshop, Washington, DC, 23 March 1999.
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⁷ U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Overview of the Economy, <http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/glance.htm>. Accessed 5 October 1998.
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⁸ Total Maryland energy consumption from Tim La Ronde, Maryland Energy Administration, personal communication, 9 March 1999. In 1998, Maryland population was 5 million. The U.S. federal government consumed 205 kWh per U.S. resident in 1995 (1995 U.S. population was 262.76 million).
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⁹ See Hamblin, op. cit note 6.
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¹⁰ In 1996, the federal government consumed 521.1 trillion Btu in jet fuel, which according to the EIA is primarily by the Department of Defense (DoD), though it is not clear exactly how much. DOE, Annual Energy Review 1996, op. cit. note 4, p. 29.
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¹¹ For example, photovoltaics in New England can operate during the summer, when electricity demand peaks due to cooling needs. PVs can supply the extra electricity for the summer, serving to “shave” electricity demand “peaks” economically and avoiding the need for expensive central power plants.
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¹² Based on data from DOE, EIA, Annual Energy Outlook 1998, DOE/EIA-0383(98) (December 1997). Total carbon emissions from the electricity sector was 516.7 million metric tons of carbon (mmtC) in 1996, while total U.S. electricity consumption was 3,481 billion kWh. Thus average carbon emissions per kWh were 0.148 kilograms/kWh. Total federal government electricity consumption was 54 billion kWh. Annual per capita emissions in the United States were 5.55 kg.
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¹³ See Curtis Moore, Dying Needlessly: Sickness and Death Due to Energy-Related Air Pollution, Renewable Energy Policy Project Issue Brief No. 6 (College Park, MD: February 1997).
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¹⁴ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air Radiation, Office of Atmospheric Programs, Guidance on Establishing an Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EE/RE) Set-Aside in the N0x Budget Trading Program (Washington, D.C.: March 1999). The guidance only applies to states that are a part of the Ozone Transport Assessment Group, mainly in the eastern U.S.
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¹⁵ National Wind Coordinating Committee, The Effect of Wind Energy Development on State and Local Economies, Wind Energy Issue Brief No. 5, January 1997. Visit the NWCC at <http://www.nationalwind.org>.
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¹⁶ EIA, <www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/cia/t1p01.txt> and <www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/cia/t40p01.txt>. Accessed 20 April 1998.
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¹⁷ Steve Clemmer and Don Wichert, The Economic Impacts of Renewable Energy Use in Wisconsin (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Energy Bureau, 1994). Contact the Bureau at 101 E. Wilson St. 6 th Floor, Madison, WI 53707-7868.
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¹⁸ Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, <http://www.energy.cted.wa.gov/ECONWReport/ Default.htm>. Accessed 15 January 1998. Renewable energy firms include biomass, electric vehicles, fuel cells, geothermal, solar (including balance-of-system items such as energy storage and inverters), hydroelectric below 30 megawatts, and wind.
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¹⁹ Ward Lynn, Iowa State Energy Office, personal communication, 14 July 1998.
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²⁰ Vinnie Hunt, City of Tucson, personal communication, 15 July 1998.
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²¹ Don Osborn, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Sacramento, CA, personal communcation, 11 February 1998. Manufacturing facilities for PV modules and balance-of-supply components were set for operation by the end of 1998.
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²² Richard Marczewski, “Bridging the Virtual Valley of Death for Technology R&D,” The Scientist, January 1997, p. 11. Also see President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: November 1997), pp. 7-14 to 7-20.
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²³ PCAST, ibid.
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²⁴ The agencies are the Department of Defense, the Department of Interior (including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management), and the U.S. Forest Service. From Government Procurement Project’s Energy Ideas Web site, <http:// prince.essential.org/orgs/GPP/energy_ideas/EI.0296/ EI.0296.04.html>. Accessed 13 July 1998.
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²⁵ Due to space constraints, Parts III and IV focus primarily on renewable energy power generation rather than fuels such as ethanol. While such fuels may present important environmental and economic development benefits, they also present unique issues that focus on transportation policy and infrastructure, and would not be well served with a brief analytical treatment.
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²⁶ DOE, Federal Technology Alert, DOE/GO-10098-484 (April 1998), p. 15,visit DOE’s Alternative Fuels Data Center at <http:// www.afdc.doe.gov/>.
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²⁷ Ibid.
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²⁸ Doug DeNio, formerly of National Park Service, personal communication, 22 May 1998.
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²⁹ Debra van Opstal, Road Map for Federal Acquisition (FAR) Reform (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1995). Contact CSIS at 202-887-0200.
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³⁰ “Vice President Gore Announces the Results of Employee Survey,” Reinvention Express, 22 December 1998, <http://www.npr.gov/ library/express/1988/vol14no14.html>. Accessed 7 January 1999.
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³¹ For example, it has no legal enforcement mechanism that allows citizens to sue non-complying agencies. Executive Orders can explicitly allow citizens the right to sue, and can incorporate existing statutory language for enforcement.
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³² Executive Order 12902, “Energy Efficiency and Water Conservation at Federal Facilities,” March 1994, Federal Register 59, No. 47, 10 March 1994, pp. 11463–71.
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³³ The one tangible result of the order was the initiation of the “Federal Procurement Challenge,” an effort headed by DOE to encour-age voluntary purchases of renewables within federal agencies.
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³⁴ Learn more about the program at <http://www.iclei.org/us/>.
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³⁵ Federal Acquisition Regulation Subpart 41.2—Acquiring Utility Services, states that the DoD Appropriations Act of 1988 prohibits federal agencies from using appropriations to purchase electricity “in any manner that is inconsistent with state law governing the provision of electric utility service, including state utility commission rulings and electric utility franchises or service territories established pursuant to state statute, state regulation, or state-approved territorial agreements.” An exception is made for DoD facilities if the “applicable state-approved franchise…[is] unwilling or unable to meet unusual standards for service reliability that are necessary for purposes of national defense.”
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³⁶ For example, the General Services Administration (GSA) in New England awarded a contract to Enron Energy Services (EES) whereby federal facilities in northeastern states with deregulated electricity markets can essentially order their inclusion in the contract. EES guaranteed GSA a significant reduction in electricity bills due to federal facility aggregation. GSA thought the reduction significant enough to finance a commitment to purchase 4% of its electricity needs from renewables. GSA’s commitment should amount to approximately 2 MW. Under the contract, EES will be searching for local sources of green power, which is defined in the GSA contract as renewable energy technologies that are included in definitions in each state’s deregulation legislation. GSA can pay up to 120% of the cost for conventional electricity. It is looking at biomass-based electricity generation, as well as integrated solar roofs.
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³⁷ For more information on Super ESPCs, visit FEMP at <http://www.eren.doe.gov/femp/financing/>. For information on technology-specific ESPCs, contact Tatiana Muessel, DOE, at 202-586-9230. Solicitations can be found at <http://www.eren.doe.gov/golden/solicit.htm>.
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³⁸ For example, suppose a facility purchased a 24-kW PV system with $671,000 in total project costs, on top of a conventional energy efficiency project costing $979,000. Because the PV purchase will reduce annual energy cost savings, the agency cuts its share of annual energy savings, compared with an ESPC without the PV system, from 37% to 1% (or from $38,000 to $650) to allow the ESCO sufficient annual revenue from the savings. Since the agency has cut its share of annual savings, the payback period for the project is lengthened from 9.5 years to 15.4 years. Joe Bourg, NEOS Corporation, presentation to federal Interagency Energy Task Force, Washington, DC, 24 September 1998.
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³⁹ Public Law 104-108 (Section 1608: Termination of Future Tax-Exempt Bond Financing for Local Furnishers of Electricity and Gas).
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⁴⁰ See Joel Stronberg and Virinder Singh, “Government Procurement of Photovoltaics,” in Expanding Markets for Photovoltaics (Washington, DC: Renewable Energy Policy Project, 1998.)
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⁴¹ For information on grants and incentives for governments under the Million Solar Roofs program, visit <http://www.eren.doe.gov/ millionroofs/grantin.html>.
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⁴² Letter from Angus Duncan, Columbia/Pacific Institute and Dick Wanderscheid, City of Ashland, 24 August 1998.
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⁴³ The concept of “conjunctive billing” in regulated utility markets means that if a utility charges low rates for one customer class it can charge higher rates for another customer class, to make up for lost revenue per unit of electricity sold and cover its cost of providing service. Generally, government facilities have paid more for electricity so that private consumers pay less. However, this should merely result in higher taxes for private consumers, with little real savings for either group. By spreading out the cost of electricity over many customer classes due to aggregation among government and residential customers, the default price of electricity (or the price of electricity the customer would pay without explicitly choosing its own provider or aggregation program) paid by non-aggregated consumers may rise. This may make green power options more attractive to these classes, since the premium to be paid for green power would not be as high as it would be with a lower default price.
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⁴⁴ See Peter Asmus, Power to the People: How Local Governments Can Build Green Electricity Markets Renewable Energy Policy Project Issue Brief No. 9 (Washington, DC: January 1998). One example of public-private aggregation mentioned, although in a regulated electricity market, is the Windsource program in Colorado. Public Service of Colorado, an investor-owned utility, has aggregated demand from the cities of Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs with non-government loads to finance wind power at a small premium.
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⁴⁵ The Government Corporation Control Act (31 U.S.C. 9101) limits federal supply sources to supply property and services to executive agencies, mixed-ownership government corporations, the District of Columbia, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Architect of the Capitol, and “certain other organizations.”
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⁴⁶ For more information on the Santa Monica program, contact Susan Munves at 310-458-8229.
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⁴⁷ U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, Bundled Contract Study FY 1991-1995, Research Summary (Washington, DC: 1997). Available at <http://www.sba.gov/ADVO/research/rs177.html>.
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⁴⁸ Glen Coontz, Photovoltaic Purchasing Guidebook for Local and State Governments, a project of the Urban Consortium Energy Task Force of Public Technology, Inc. (PTI) and the City of Albuquerque, N.M. Visit PTI’s Urban Consortium Energy Task Force at <http://www.pti.org/>.
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⁴⁹ Contact the Center at 505-844-3698.
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⁵⁰ Visit IREC at <http://www.eren.doe.gov/irec/>.
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⁵¹ George Post, GSA Public Buildings Service, Tampa, FL, Field Office, personal communication, 14 July 1998.
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⁵² Note that Alaska, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Wyoming limit or prohibit referenda that include appropriation measures. Alaska, Massachusetts, and Montana prohibit referenda on local legislation and laws. Visit the National Council of State Legislatures at <http:/www.ncsl.org/> for more information.
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⁵³ DOE, Million Solar Roofs web site, <http://www.millionsolarroofs.org/>. Accessed 12 December 1998. For more information, contact Ted Arakaki, Naval Housing, at 808-471-9630, ex. 304.
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⁵⁴ For more information on net metering, see Thomas Starrs, Net Metering: New Opportunities for Home Power, Renewable Energy Policy Project Issue Brief No. 2 (Washington, DC: September 1996), and Thomas Starrs and Howard Wenger, “Policies to Support a Distributed Energy System,” Expanding Markets for Photovoltaics (Washington, DC: Renewable Energy Policy Project, 1998).
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⁵⁵ The California Renewable Resources Trust Fund will allocate up to $500 million on renewable energy. For more information on the Fund, see Thomas J. Starrs and Vincent Schwent, “Government Buy-Downs for the Residential Market,” in Expanding Markets for Photovoltaics (Washington, DC: Renewable Energy Policy Project, 1998).
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⁵⁶ See Tom Starrs, “Legislative Incentives and Energy Technologies: Government’s Role in the Development of the California Wind Energy Industry,” Ecology Law Quarterly (1988), pp. 103–58, and Adam Serchuk, Federal Giants and Wind Energy Entrepreneurs: Utility Windpower in America 1970–1990, PhD. Thesis, accepted by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Science and Technology Studies program.
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⁵⁷ John J. Berger, Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means For America (Berkeley: University of California, 1997).
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⁵⁸ For further discussion, see Nagy Hanna, Ken Guy, and Erik Arnold, The Diffusion of Information Technology: Experience of Industrial Countries and Lessons for Developing Countries, World Bank Discussion Paper No. 281 (Washington, DC: 1995).
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⁵⁹ One example of green power certification is the Green-e label, developed by the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS). For more information, contact CRS at 1-888-63GREEN or visit <http://www.green-e.org/>.
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⁶⁰ For more information, see Starrs and Schwent, op. cit. note 55.
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