OPM and the Pentagon are among agencies adopting solar under a $104M clean energy plan

The Defense Department and Office of Personnel Management will soon implement solar and other clean energy technologies at the Pentagon and other facilities as part of $104 million in grants announced Wednesday.

Energy Department officials said they would disperse the funding, as part of its Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies program, to 31 projects across the departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Interior, Transportation and Veterans Affairs, alongside OPM, the Social Security Administration and the General Services Administration.

The $104 million, designated as the first tranche of $250 million allotted from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is designed to help double new carbon-free electricity capacity at the 31 federal facilities. 

Those projects include installing rooftop solar panels, a heat-recovery heat pump system and solar thermal panels at the Pentagon; on-site solar photovoltaics and other improvements at OPM’s Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia; and replacing a 35-year-old HVAC system, installing a 75-kilowatt solar photovoltaics system and other improvements at the Maui Air Traffic Control Tower in Kahului, Hawaii. 

Officials announced the new AFFECT grants last year as a way to support President Biden’s Federal Sustainability Plan to make federal agency operations entirely carbon-neutral by 2050.

Energy Department officials said in a release Wednesday that 16 separate agencies submitted applications for the funding and that the selected projects will use the grants for equipment and technical assistance to plan, develop and implement their objectives. 

 Officials expect the projects to generate more than $29 million in energy and water costs in the first year and reduce the equivalent of nearly 30,000 homes' annual electricity usage. 

The Energy Department’s Federal Energy Management Program, which manages the AFFECT grants, will begin accepting applications for the second tranche of grants this month.