20% BY 2020 Obama

CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Boston, this is Living on Earth. Im Steve Curwood. The US government is a big customer and can boost businesses, and thats whats behind President Obama's executive order that requires at least 20 percent of the power federal departments use to come from renewable sources by the year 2020. John Powers of the White House says each agency can choose how it wants to comply. POWERS: We've given the agencies the flexibility to achieve this goal in a variety of ways: to try to take advantage of onsite renewable energy projects, for instance, can they do rooftop solar, or VA hospitals, for instance, are doing really interesting work putting solar panels over their parking lots in arrays that provide shade both to the folks parking there and also provide power to the hospitals. Another option of the agencies is to contract with a local energy project thats being developed. What this does, is that it helps that energy project get the support it needs to move forward and come online, and of course they can also go onto the market and buy green power or voluntary recs. But the intent of this is to help drive more renewable energy in this country, and we want to help agencies achieve that broader intent with their initiative. CURWOOD: By the way, whats the outstanding agency at this point? POWERS: You know what? Its hard to say. So a lot of the agencies have taken different approaches. You have EPA, the Environmental Protection Agencys done incredible work with their renewable electricity. Then you have the Defense Department…the Defense Department is working on doing large scale, utility scale renewable energy projects on their land, some, for instance, on old landfills. But theyre committing to buy the power off of those projects. Jon Powers, Federal Environmental Executive for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (Photo: United States Government) CURWOOD: Now how significant will this be in terms of savings? Im thinking of both emissions and costs. POWERS: Well, so, this helps towards the broader emissions goal the Presidents given the federal government where we have a goal of 28 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 – and were on track to meet that goal. And when we meet that goal, well have saved over $11 billion in energy costs. CURWOOD: John Powers of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Now President Obama's order to increase the federal use of renewable energy brings us to another installment in our series Power Shift, about the transition in Massachusetts to low-carbon energy.