Expect Federal Agency Sustainability to be a Difficult Issue

Few people realize that the federal government is in fact the largest user of energy in the entire country. With so many individual departments, employing hundreds of thousands of people and utilizing so many vehicles and buildings, it is a surprise that the issue of agency sustainability has not been raised before.

Presidential executive orders are quite rare, although some have addressed environmental issues before. Never have we seen an EO more sharply focused on the issue of carbon emissions than Obama’s most recent. He demands that each Federal department now fully understands its agency sustainability.

There is little time for thought, as Obama has asked agency heads to come back to him within 90 days with their plans. He needs to know how they are going to take inventory of their emissions and what kind of plan they will put in place to monitor, report and reduce their liabilities. While this appears straightforward on paper, it is nevertheless a difficult problem.

Federal agencies will undoubtedly be pleased to find out that there are organizations in the private sector, already geared up to focus on these complex issues of sustainability. Solutions already exist and are in use within major distributed enterprises, allowing each individual asset to be monitored and overall efficiency reviewed.

Due to the size of the federal government, any meaningful measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contain energy use and other resource wastage will have a significant and knock on effect for the country as a whole. Each employee will be impacted as these measures unfold and there is certain to be a knock on effect as agency sustainability developments spread 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 emissions is the biggest issue covered by Obama’s executive order, agencies are also required to take stock of their waste production and disposal and consolidate the water resource usage. The order also dictates that new federal buildings are fully sustainable.

The US has long been accused of inaction, but the Executive Order has certainly gone a long way to assuage the critics. Congress will ultimately follow with legislation forcing companies in the private sector to take more concerted action.

Daniel Stouffer has much more information about agency sustainability and how a visit to www.verisae.com can benefit you.

categories: carbon emissions,environmental damage,climate change,climate,environment