DOE: Do as we say, not as we do

The Department of Energy is hard at work making the U.S. energy efficient. Unfortunately, it failed its own energy audit.

Tue, Jun 09 2009 at 4:06 PM

Related Topics:

Energy Efficiency, Department of Energy (DOE)

Shea's note: I'm moving to the big city of Portland, Maine, this week and taking a few days off from writing to pack and move. Some of my green blogger pals are helping me out by writing a few guest posts. Today's post comes courtesy of Matt Embrey. Read his post and find links to his work at the bottom.

The U..S Department of Energy has been charged with the task of enhancing our nation's energy efficiency (and spending the $38.7 billion in stimulus funds). To do this they are running a number of programs that focus on developing new technology as well as promoting energy efficient practices to the public. Unfortunately what they are not doing is heeding their own advice. An audit released last month by the Inspector General showed that:

"We concluded that Headquarters programs offices as well as field sites had not developed and/or implemented policies and procedures necessary to ensure that information technology equipment and supporting infrastructure was operated in an energy-efficient manner and in a way that minimized impact on the environment."

EPA advises that shutting down a computer monitor when not in use is one of the easiest things a user can do to save energy, but 20 of the computers reviewed had monitors that were set to never shut off. The audit estimates that failure to address issues like these will result in a failure to recoup $23 million in savings over the next five years as well as a significant environmental impact:

"We noted that the potential for reduced energy consumption at these sites alone was equivalent to the annual power requirements of over 2,400 homes or, alternatively, removing about 3,000 cars from the road each year."

It's not quite as embarrassing as Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change's office building scoring the worst possible rating on their energy efficiency audit, but it's still pretty embarrassing. Come on people, what happened to leading by example? To show you how easy it is I'm going to turn my monitor off right now... seehow eas y that wsa/ Itsa allaobut changing behAIVOR.

VIA tHE wALL sTREET jOURNAL

Author bio: By day Matt Embrey is a humble public servant, but by night he is a green blogger, DIY fiend, political junkie and eligible bachelor. He is the co-founder and editor of greenupgrader.com, amazonpilgrim.com & crispgreen.com. He can also be found lurking on Twitter as @mattgup.

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