Posts Tagged ‘energy’

Newton Square, Pa.-based Balfour Beatty Communities, a leading developer of privatized family housing for the military, will offer residents at Navy installations in the Southeast smart meter information and personalized conservation tools to help them conserve energy through a grant from the Department of Energy. The Smart Grid Data Access award from the Energy Department will fund a “Switch 4 Good” program that will test three strategies for conserving energy — baseline management by house type, digital outreach campaigns and personal energy-use coaching. The pilot study will take advantage of an effort to transfer responsibility for utility costs to families living on base at 11 Navy installations …

The Navy’s new energy policy makes energy security “a strategic imperative” for its installations, and codifies the service’s goals to dramatically reduce energy consumption while increasing its reliance on alternative sources. The “Shore Energy Management Instruction” announced Tuesday signifies a complete revision from the previous version published in 1994. The new policy calls for Navy installations to reduce their vulnerability to outages caused by natural disasters, accidents or attacks. Goals for shore installations include …

The Army is in talks with the Hawaii Electric Co. over the possibility of developing a 50-megawatt biofuels power plant at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The effort is being led by the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force, which the service created last year to pursue large-scale renewable energy projects. The Army would rely on the plant for backup power during an outage, with the utility distributing the rest of the energy generated by the plant. The Army and the utility anticipate reaching a partnership agreement in the fourth quarter of this year …

The Air Force has selected New Generation Biomass, a Chicago-based developer of renewable and biomass energy facilities, to construct a 20-megawatt biomass/waste-to-energy facility at Holloman AFB, N.M. The enhanced use leasing project will cover 80 acres and burn wood from forest thinning, landfills, orchard pruning, sawmill residue, used pallets and other sources to generate energy …

An Air Force plan to lease 3,300 acres at Edwards AFB, Calif., to a developer to build a 440-megawatt solar field is not being slowed due to a dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over how to split revenues coming to the federal government from the enhanced use leasing project, as previously asserted in DC 360. The June 12 story cited an earlier Federal Times article, which claimed that BLM owned the land slated to be used for the project. And because the Air Force no longer planned to use the property for military purposes, the civilian agency believed the land should be returned …

L. Jerry Hansen, who had served as the Army’s number two official in the office of the assistant secretary for installations, energy and the environment, retired from the Army last month. In Hansen’s place is J. Randall Robinson, who has been the office’s acting principal deputy since June 1. Robinson previously held a series of management and staff positions with the Army’s Installation Management Command and its predecessor …

Brunswick Landing, the reuse project at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine, plans to become an R&D center for renewable energy, complete with on-site power generation and a self-contained electrical grid. The closed-loop electricity delivery system left behind by the Navy paves the way for the project to generate its own electricity and share the savings from lower-cost power with tenants. “This isn’t sexy stuff. But it could become a major advantage,” said Steve Levesque …

The Defense Department lost ground in its battle to obtain an increasing share of its facility energy from renewable sources, going from 9.6 percent in fiscal 2010 to 8.5 percent in FY 2011. The drop partially can be explained by the department’s decision to purchase fewer renewable energy credits, as well as a decline in the output of the geothermal facility at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., according to DOD’s 2012 OMB scorecard on sustainability …

Top officials from the Navy and Marine Corps, along with local dignitaries, started the generators last week during a “Flip the Switch” ceremony at a new landfill gas plant at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in Southern California last week. The 3.2-megawatt plant will supply the air station with up to half of its daily electrical power over a 15-year period from two generators powered by energy from methane gas. Miramar Energy LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortistar Methane Group, built the facility at the city of San Diego Miramar landfill, which is located on Navy property adjacent to Miramar …

The Energy Department is accepting public comments on a new publication designed to help federal agencies work with the private sector on developing large-scale renewable energy projects. Comments on the draft guidebook, Federal Renewable Energy Guide: Developing Large-Scale Renewable Energy Projects at Federal Facilities Using Private Capital, are due July 2. The June 1 Federal Register notice includes a list of eight questions, primarily covering the guide’s description of the processes used by developers and financiers to develop large-scale renewable energy projects. One question asks developers if they would be interested in pursuing projects at federal facilities that follow the steps outlined in the guidebook.