President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao formally announced the establishment of the CERC during President Obama's trip to Beijing last November. Two consortia were announced last month: one led by the University of Michigan to advance technologies for clean vehicles and one led by West Virginia University to focus on the next generation of clean coal technologies. Total funding for the CERC, including private and public investments in both countries, will be at least $150 million. See the DOE press release.
DOE Names 2010 Federal Energy and Water Management Award Winners
DOE announced on October 7 that 31 individuals, teams, and organizations across the federal government received Federal Energy and Water Management Awards for their efforts to improve energy, water, and vehicle fleet efficiency.
Awardees saved taxpayers almost $42 million in energy and water costs in Fiscal Year 2009 and kept the equivalent of about 190,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. These efforts are also helping to move cutting-edge clean energy technologies into the marketplace, create new U.S. jobs, and strengthen national security.
For example, the U.S. Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow in Barstow, California, was lauded for installing its first large-scale wind turbine, a 1.5 MW turbine that supplied 11.6% of the base's electricity in FY2009 (3600 MwH). The Navy Region Southwest earned an award for being at the forefront of the Navy's energy program. It replaced 21 billion Btu of fossil fuels with a combination of solar, wind, and geothermal, generating 4300 MwH of renewable energy.
Together, this year's winners saved 38 billion Btu by installing solar thermal and solar PV systems, wind turbines, and methane gas generated by landfills. They also saved 1.7 trillion Btu by upgrading heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, and by installing high-efficiency lighting and energy management control systems. Winners also built certified green buildings with state-of-the-art technologies; implemented energy savings performance contracts, in which federal agencies partner with energy service companies to promote energy cost savings; and partnered in utility energy services contracts, in which utilities arrange financing to cover the capital costs of projects, which are then repaid over the terms of the contracts from cost savings generated by the energy efficiency measures.
The 2010 Federal Energy and Water Management Awards winners were selected from nominations submitted by 17 federal agencies. Included among the award winners are employees from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy; DOE and the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; the General Services Administration; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. See the DOE press release and the Web site for the 2010 Federal Energy and Water Management Awards.
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EREE Network News is a weekly publication of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
