|
|
 |
Washington Technology
November 3, 2008
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/print/23_16/33836-1.html?page=1
A fresh footprint
Contractors chase data-driven
opportunities to reduce agency carbon emissions
By Nick Wakeman
For a growing number of government contractors, the green revolution is moving beyond making PCs and data centers run more efficiently. Contractors are seeing an emerging market in helping agencies manage their carbon footprints.
That includes not only making their information technology systems run better, but also using IT to monitor overall energy use, such as electricity, gas, steam and water, and analyzing the energy consumption of their operations.
Companies are seeing opportunities to install advanced metering, manage equipment life cycles, audit operations and train personnel. But getting customers to see that vision can still be challenging.
“The biggest problem is we have a lot of people to educate,” said Jeff Wacker, a fellow and futurist at EDS Corp. “To go green, too many people look at the bits and pieces and then the reaction is, ‘That is going to cost me money.’ ”
START WITH DATA
But with the tight budgets agencies are experiencing, saving money can be a strong selling point for going green. In addition, congressional mandates — such as the 2005 Energy Policy Act, 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, and Executive Order 13423 — require agencies to collect information on energy consumption and to look for ways to reduce usage and lower costs, including using alternative fuels.
Data collection, benchmarking and data analysis are at the heart of many of the opportunities contractors are finding.
The Navy, for instance, launched its Advanced Metering Infrastructure Program in September with a $250 million contract that went to systems integrator American Systems, Inc.; Square-D, a maker of electrical control devices; and Weston Solutions Inc., an environmental engineering company, said Bill Anderson, a Navy program manager.
Although the service undertook the project to meet current mandates, it is moving toward measuring its carbon footprint, he said.
“I expect that with the next round of mandates that we’ll have to capture our carbon footprint data, and we’ve started to do that,” he said.
The Navy plans to install 12,000 meters on buildings at its facilities worldwide. They will monitor electricity, gas, steam and water use.
Although many of the buildings have meters, the older meters don’t allow for the type of monitoring needed. The new ones are solid state as opposed to electro-mechanical and will connect to a meter data manager system, which will collect and analyze the data, he said.
The project supports the notion that you can’t manage what you don’t measure, said Peter Smith, executive vice president of operations at American Systems Corp.
“We really look at this as a systems integration project,” he said. The data-analysis aspect, for instance, will allow the Navy to identify what is driving spikes in electricity use. “Right now they don’t know,” Smith said.
Data collection is a critical starting point when looking for efficiencies, said Ronald Peoples, who manages the federal consulting team at Citrix Systems Inc. When Citrix goes in to help an organization virtualize its servers, it starts by asking about processing power, memory, storage and use.
“You can’t forget the users, too,” Peoples said. “If you have different types of users, that has to be factored in.” The questioning helps Citrix and its customers determine where they can reduce costs, what equipment they should buy and how they can manage workloads.
Along with collecting data, it is important to identify where the information is coming from and integrate those sources into an enterprise management system, said Gary Rahl, a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
“That way, you can get to the data more readily and you don’t have to go through the exercise of digging it up and estimating it each time you need it,” he said.
After establishing the baseline on energy use, it is critical to benchmark the use, said Chet Thaker, chief executive officer of Telebright Corp., which makes software for energy-efficiency monitoring.
“Knowing what you are spending and monitoring your energy use [aren’t] enough,” he said.
“Benchmarking means [asking] how good is your building at using energy compared to buildings of similar size and use characteristics?” But don’t make people sweat — literally, Thaker said. “What you want is greater productivity from people. Saving a few bucks on energy by making them miserable isn’t the thing to do,” he said.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF WHAT YOU HAVE
Often simple actions can get agencies started on being more efficient. After it does an assessment of an agency’s energy use and carbon footprint, SRA International Inc. presents two sets of recommendations. The first set involves easy steps, but they can have a significant result, said Timothy Cooke, vice president and director of strategic initiatives at the company.
“These are low-cost or no-cost things, such as policy changes or switch settings,” he said.
“Organizations need to take advantage of the technologies that they already have in place.”
It isn’t uncommon for agencies to buy Energy Star-compliant equipment and not activate those features, said Anthony Cicco, senior principal and director of enterprisewide solutions at SRA.
Many companies are starting to see growth opportunities beyond the easy targets.
Booz Allen has done an alternative-fuels analysis for the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which operates a fleet of several thousand vehicles. The company also conducted a greenhouse-gas inventory for the Air Force and is working on a carbon footprint analysis for the U.S. Postal Service.
“When you organize emissions into a framework that makes sense to the organization, you can begin to examine what to do about them,” Rahl said.
EVOLVING OPPORTUNITY
Until recently, agencies had been asking for bits and pieces of an overall solution, but that is changing.
Science Applications International Corp., for example, has been providing energy procurement, audit and management services; assessments of risk management, carbon and renewable energy; and energy-efficiency design-and- build work for several years, said Michael Mondshine, assistant vice president and senior policy analyst for climate change services at SAIC.
“We have done the pieces, but now [agencies] are starting to think about packaging them into a comprehensive program,” he said.
Although requests for proposals incorporating a holistic approach are still rare, many contractors remain convinced that there is an opportunity.
SRA, like other commercial companies, has done its own internal assessment to reduce its expenditures. The same potential is there for its customers.
“Where you can take what amounts to wasted energy that is doing no one any good and redeploy those assets… there is a business in there,” Cooke said. “We think this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
|