Federal Agency Sustainability May Be More Than a Dream

If you were to ask half a dozen people who they thought was the largest polluter in the country, the chances are that few would guess it was the federal government itself. If you think about the number of departments, all those buildings, vehicles and hundreds of thousands of employees, then you could also ask why the problem of federal agency sustainability has not achieved more publicity before?

Presidential executive orders rarely get as much exposure in the media as they should, but Obama’s EO 3514 was very topical, following closely on his appearance at the United Nations climate summit. Within his order he insists that agency sustainability is paramount and forces each Federal department into action.

Within 90 days, agency senior management has to develop a concerted plan and return this information to the executive branch. They will need to determine the size of their emissions and also report their targets for reductions and how they are going to go about achieving this. It may seem straightforward on paper, but this will be one of the biggest challenges they have ever faced.

Within the private sector, large and distributed organizations have turned to individual companies that provide solutions and software products to help them address sustainability. These solutions focus on individual asset performance and correlate all this information to form the bigger picture.

The federal government has such a reach into communities around the country but meaningful measures to address its greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage will undoubtedly have a very significant and unfolding, knock on effect. As each individual employee is impacted by the changes, he or she is certain to carry the mantra back into the community at large.

Change may indeed begin at home and environmentalists expect us all to be “green.” However, if the federal government, as intrusive as it is, fully embraces the concept of agency sustainability, it will undoubtedly force us all to do more.

While carbon emission reduction may be a primary goal, Obama’s executive order also forces federal agencies to take account of water resource usage and how they treat waste production and disposal. In addition, all future federal buildings must be constructed to fully sustainable standards.

The executive order issued by Obama will help to silence some of the critics of US inaction. It will be more difficult for Congress to pass legislation impacting companies in the private sector, but it seems certain that this will develop over time.

Daniel Stouffer has a lot of data about agency sustainability and how a visit to www.verisae.com will aid you.

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