Cleaning up the House

JUST BENEATH FREEDOM, energy efficiency is afoot.

Freedom is the 19th-century bronze statue perched atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Four old-fashioned 500-W incandescent light bulbs illuminate the cupola just below Freedom's pedestal from dusk to dawn every night when either the House of Representatives or the Senate is in session. Despite the electricity they gobble, the lamps provide dim illumination.

Under the new Green the Capitol initiative, energy-efficient technology that generates more lumens with less electricity will replace those inefficient bulbs. The initiative, launched earlier this year by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), aims to conserve energy, boost energy efficiency, and save taxpayers' money.

Pelosi assigned the job of greening the Capitol to Daniel P. Beard, chief administrative officer of the House of Representatives.

Beard, at Pelosi's urging, came out of retirement for a third time earlier this year to head the office that provides operations support services to the 435 elected members of the House and some 9,500 staffers. His previous experience includes a decade as a Capitol Hill staff member, serving as the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1993 to 1995, and stints at an international management consulting firm and a regional environmental organization.

Beard delivered 137 recommendations for greening the Capitol to Pelosi in June. As of November, approximately 20% of the recommendations had been implemented, Beard says. He estimates it will take five years to put the remainder in place. And while the initiative is now confined to the House side of the Capitol, Beard hopes the Senate will become interested in the greening campaign, too.

In some ways, Beard's task is easy. The Capitol and the complex of congressional office buildings surrounding it until recently have had few requirements for energy efficiency. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for a 2% annual cut in energy use at all federal buildings, including the Capitol complex, between 2006 and 2015. Beard has boosted the energy reduction target for the House to 5% per year, putting it on course to cut use 50% from 2006 levels by 2017.

Since this past summer, Beard has overseen easy-to-implement improvements that are already significantly reducing energy use. Some are visible; others are deep in the bowels of the buildings. These include sealing leaky ducts in the ventilation system and installing compact fluorescent light bulbs in offices, hallways, and hearing rooms.

"It's not brain surgery," Beard tells C&EN, pointing out that corporations, colleges, state and local governments, and other organizations have already made energy-efficiency upgrades.

But Beard also runs up against hard political realities.

One involves the Capitol Power Plant, the 97-year-old pollution-belching facility that produces steam and chilled water to heat and cool buildings on Capitol Hill, including the Library of Congress and Washington's Union Station. Despite its name, the plant hasn't generated electricity for the Capitol since 1952; in fact, Congress draws its juice from the local electric utility. The Capitol Power Plant burns mostly coal and natural gas to heat seven boilers.

The Green the Capitol initiative calls for the physical plant of the House of Representatives to operate in a carbon-neutral fashion by the end of 2008. This means slashing CO₂ emissions through energy efficiency and fuel switching, with the purchase of carbon offsets to balance the rest.

THE CAPITOL Power Plant accounts for 32% of the 316,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from Legislative Branch activities in Washington, according to an April report from the Government Accountability Office. Another 63% of these emissions, GAO says, comes from use of electricity purchased from a local utility, Pepco, which burns coal to generate more than half the power it supplies.

Buying electricity from renewable resources will cut these emissions significantly. The Green the Capitol initiative includes plans to buy the roughly 103,000 MW-hours of electricity the House uses each year from solar and wind-powered sources. This switch will cost $520,000 a year more than buying electricity from Pepco. Putting this extra expense in perspective, Grant Scherling, executive director of the Green the Capitol initiative, says the House has paid nearly $10 million in the past year for electricity.

Curbing the House's greenhouse gas emissions will also require burning less coal and more natural gas at the Capitol Power Plant. And that's the rub.

In 2000, the architect of the Capitol, the official who is responsible for the maintenance, operation, and preservation of the Capitol complex, proposed to fire the facility solely with natural gas. But lawmakers from coal-producing states, Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), overrode that plan. Thus, coal trains keep rolling to the Capitol Power Plant.

Deferring respectfully to the coal-state senators, Beard proposes that the plant switch to burning natural gas only to the extent needed to meet the heating and cooling needs of the House of Representatives. This compromise allows the other entities served by the plant, including the Senate office buildings, to choose coal or other fuels to produce their steam and chilled water.

MEANWHILE, in November, Beard bought carbon-offset credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange equivalent to 24,000 tons of CO₂, costing $89,000. The credits will come from solar and wind energy, as well as domestic forestry projects, he says.

The move was not without controversy. Some observers question whether the carbon-offset system actually works, in part because forestry efforts keep CO₂ locked in plant tissue only as long as the trees grow. Some Republicans are questioning why taxpayers' money is being used to buy carbon offsets. In fact, after Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.) heard about the offset purchase, he asked Beard to hold off handing over the check until GAO completed an analysis of the carbon-offset market. But by then, the purchase was completed.

The Green the Capitol effort, meanwhile, moves on. Some of the changes are nearly invisible. Beard has, in his words, "dug in the weeds" to ferret out energy savings. Run times on the fans for the heating and cooling systems are 14% shorter than they used to be. This reduction chips away at the amount of energy used to maintain indoor comfort levels, which accounts for two-thirds of the House's energy use. In addition, all House purchase orders and procurement contracts now specify use of either environmentally preferred or Energy Star energy-saving items.

Other greening actions are subtle but more noticeable. For instance, the House office supply store now stocks only recycled office paper. Eighty-four vending machines, providing sodas and snacks for legions of visitors, lobbyists, and long-working Hill staffers, are being replaced with more energy-efficient ones, some of which won't turn on their lights unless they detect the motion of a prospective purchaser.

And the majestic chandelier outside the Speaker of the House's office now sports compact fluorescent bulbs. Even this simple change wasn't simple. Beard was told that energy-saving bulbs weren't available to replace the odd-sized, tear-drop-shaped incandescent lamps in the historic chandelier. But he found them after a little searching online.

"It's a dramatic change," he says, gazing over a railing at the enormous golden chandelier. The fluorescent bulbs cost more than the incandescents, he notes. But the lamps draw less energy and they need to be replaced far less often than their predecessors, which is a costsaving benefit too, Beard says. Replacing the light bulbs in the historic suspended fixture is a labor-intensive task that requires bringing special equipment into the Capitol to elevate maintenance workers so they can unscrew burned-out lamps, he explains.

Other changes have just begun. One of the most recent moves under the initiative was to bring the vehicle-sharing service Zipcar to the House. Scores of Capitol Hill staffers signed up immediately, even the House chaplain, who plans to use a Zipcar to make hospital visits, Beard says.

And this month, food service operations will implement a major waste-reduction scheme consistent with the Green the Capitol initiative's aim to boost recycling of paper, glass, plastic, and metals and cut the amount of garbage produced. In 2006, the House recycled less than a third of its waste.

"Fifty percent of our waste stream here at the House comes from our food services operations," Beard points out. "That, I am happy to say, is about to end."

Before the year is over, a half-dozen cafeterias and carryout restaurants nestled in office buildings and the House side of the Capitol will replace conventional plastic carryout containers, cups, and cutlery with biodegradable versions. Once tossed away, these items will get processed in dewatering equipment that will squeeze the waste to half its bulk before they are hauled to a commercial composting facility. Reducing the volume of food-related waste, Beard says, will cut the cost of transporting it.

Beard is proud of the green upgrades he is overseeing in the House. "We're really making progress," he says. "I'm really enthused." And, he adds, the modifications will save the government money.

"A few members of the House have questioned things" about the initiative, he acknowledges. But many others, especially younger House staffers, see the Green the Capitol effort as a positive move, Beard says.

"I like change," Beard says. "What it takes, more than anything, is commitment."