Federal Buildings Go Green with $4 Billion in Recovery Act Funds
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) recently reached the milestone of investing $4 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for energy efficiency in federal buildings nationwide. Since the passage of the Recovery Act in 2009, the GSA has awarded construction projects to more than 500 companies, creating jobs in all 50 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia. To accomplish this feat, the GSA streamlined operations to quickly award contracts and begin construction on hundreds of green projects.
The GSA Recovery Act projects include: construction of a new energy-efficient courthouse in Austin, Texas, incorporating innovative features such as high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, extensive use of natural light, and a efficient "green" roof; the installation of solar panels and insulation on the roof of the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Regional Office and Insurance Center in Pennsylvania; and renovation of the Goodfellow Federal Center in St. Louis, Missouri, modernizing the 1941-vintage structure with advanced lighting systems, maximum daylight, a high-performance heating and cooling system, and solar hot water. The GSA was given $5.5 billion under the Recovery Act to create green federal facilities.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.