Feds To Spend $120M Upgrading D.C.-Area Government Office Buildings
The outgoing Biden administration is launching a series of sustainability-focused renovations of federal office buildings around the nation's capital using money from the Inflation Reduction Act.
The General Services Administration Tuesday announced the award of $120M through a contract to a subsidiary of Baltimore-based Constellation Energy to perform energy savings upgrades at five D.C.-area buildings.
The buildings set to receive upgrades are the Elijah Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, the William B. Bryant Annex, the Orville Wright Federal Building and the Wilbur Wright Federal Building in D.C., and the Harvey W. Wiley Federal Building in College Park.
The renovations will include upgrades to building control systems, lighting and other measures to improve energy efficiency.
The four D.C. buildings will all be converted to operate exclusively on electric power, removing them from the government's fossil-fuel-powered steam distribution system.
The Wright buildings span more than 1.2M SF across two blocks on Independence Avenue SW, and they house the Federal Aviation Administration headquarters. The courthouse and annex building total more than 900K SF in the Judiciary Square complex. The 410K SF College Park building houses Food and Drug Administration offices.
The awards are part of the GSA's effort to reduce energy costs across the government's real estate portfolio by $450M, and they help the Biden administration push toward its goal of achieving net-zero emissions from federal buildings by 2045.
“By implementing innovative efficiency measures, we’re harnessing the best of American ingenuity to make the federal footprint more efficient — while moving away from costly fossil fuels and reducing harmful emissions,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a release.
But the future of those efforts has been thrown into question following the election. President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the transition to clean energy and called for boosting fossil fuel production in the U.S.
The outgoing administration appears to be pushing to deploy as much money as it can from its spending bills before handing the reins to Trump. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is also working to push out billions in grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law before leaving office, Forbes reported Tuesday.
