Attempting to perpetuate an early program of the Clinton Administration — energy performance contracting for federal facilities — Sempra Energy Solutions and a contractors’ coalition told a Senate committee hearing last Tuesday that time is running out on the 10-year-old energy-saving program that they claim has resulted in tens of millions of dollars in savings for the federal facilities.

The Sempra executive represented his company and the Federal Performance Contracting Coalition (FPCC) at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on energy efficiency/conservation programs. Sempra Solutions has been a major energy services provider to U.S. military bases.

Contending that a lot of the $4 billion the federal facilities spend on energy annually is “wasted money,” Erbin Keith, Sempra Energy Solutions’ senior vice president, urged Congress to extend the private sector financed energy performance contracting before it expires Sept. 30 this year. In addition, he asked Congress to mandate that federal agencies that don’t use it report why they don’t.

From 2001 to 2002, projects were reduced among federal agencies by almost half while the “cumulative investment was reduced by more than 25%,” Keith told the Senate committee. Since the start of the energy performance contracting in 1992, the private sector has invested more than $1.2 billion in it, he said.

Citing specific examples from his own company, Keith said Sempra spent $22 million to retrofit facilities at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, resulting in annual savings of $2.3 million. He said similar programs have saved millions of dollars at eight Veterans Administration Medical Centers around the country, at Ft. Bragg, NC, and at the Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Base in the high desert in Southern California.

According to the contractors’ coalition, the federal agencies are protected — as is the taxpayer — because the private energy service firms only are repaid when their programs produce promised energy savings.

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