Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined how his department will find savings, including $286 million in the next fiscal year, by changing the materials that go into coins, replacing paper with electronic communications and consolidating internal agencies.

The effort to find efficiencies is part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to reduce budget deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Geithner, in written testimony prepared for the House Committee on Appropriations, said a good portion of next year’s savings at Treasury will come from changing the composition of U.S. coins to more cost-effective materials.

“Currently, the costs of making the penny and the nickel are more than twice the face value of each of those coins,” Geithner said in his remarks.