The DOE has announced a $213 million Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) with the FDA’s White Oak Campus. This task is the largest ever awarded to the ESPC, designed to save more than 5.5 trillion BTU over the twenty-year life of the project.

The facility, located in Silver Spring, MD, is intended to be a model of energy efficiency.

In the first year alone, the project is expected to save more than $25 million in energy, operations, and maintenance costs.

The contract, awarded by the General Services Administration (GSA) to Honeywell International, will use avoided energy costs to leverage private-sector investment to pay for the $213 million project, which will support the equivalent of 2,300 jobs for a year.

This project features a combined heat and power plant that reliably produces electricity for the laboratory needs of the FDA and uses waste heat to produce building heating and cooling.

Building construction is expected to be complete in 2014 and produce 250,000 megawatt hours per year. In addition to the combined heat and power plant, the project will include upgrades to the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, improvements to lighting—including the latest LED technology—and modifications to the building envelope to make it more energy efficient.

When the impact of electricity generation by the utility is taken into account, all of the energy conservation measures at the FDA’s White Oak Campus will result in energy savings of at least 279 billion BTU per year for 20 years—the equivalent of removing more than 4,000 cars from the road each year.

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