The Greening of Government: Getting To Net-Zero
Summer 2010 • Volume 2 • Number 3

The renovation of GSA Headquarters in Washington, DC will be a test bed for net-zero design and workplace flexibility.

Kevin Kampschroer is the director, Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings at GSA. He recently spoke to Jeff Erlichman, On The FrontLines editor about the renovation and its ramifications. The work is being done in two phases and scheduled for completion in 2015.

Jeff Erlichman, OTFL: Is the GSA headquarters renovation a prime example of a high tech renovation?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: A lot of cool things are happening in this building, but there is more than just high tech; it’s a combination of high tech, low tech and no tech.

For example, one of the no tech things we are going to do is have what the building had when it was built in 1917—windows that open and close. That’s practically no tech. So, on those 100 plus days in DC where all you need to do is open the windows that’s what people will do. There will be a lot of communication to tenants telling them this is a good day to open the windows, but people are smart; in DC when it’s 95 degrees with 95% humidity, no one thinks of opening the windows.

JE, OTFL: How are you going to use solar energy to meet your power requirements?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: We are putting some solar panels on the roof. While it is not exactly new technology, solar panels do produce direct current and computers need direct current.

Typically you take AC and put it through transformer and convert to DC and you lose a little efficiency that way. What typically happens with solar is it produces DC, then you convert it into AC and then pump it into building system. What we are going to do is run a line straight from the panels down to the Data Center, so we power the servers DC to DC; that way we will save 10% in efficiency in use of power.

We are looking at other things to test out and we will see what our budget allows when we get the bids in. There are many options, but we might try some aspects where we have a DC grid—which the lighting, computers and security systems all of which eventually use—where we are distributing DC throughout the building; in other words have one big transformer distribute the direct current rather than a bunch of little transformers.

JE, OTFL: How are you handling lighting and its effect on energy use?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: We are going to have shading that is tied to the sun. All of the places that you work in the building have daylight. We are going to have total daylight harvesting throughout the building with lights that dim automatically. But they will have user overrides.

We found in one pilot in San Francisco if you give users the ability to override the control system, people actually turn lights down lower than the computer system is choosing, thus getting more savings. In fact we got a 60% savings in lighting energy in that pilot.

In addition, the building has an atrium that has no shading. We examined some different shading options; it turns out the best overall cost effective option for shading that atrium is to put solar panels on the glass roof of the atrium. The panels are not completely opaque; they filter the light and generate the electricity and is cheaper than the mechanical shades that were part of the design, plus there is lower maintenance over time.

JE OTFL: How “carved in stone” are your design concepts? And how will they affect employees?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: We have a concept, but we going to allow a fair amount of flexibility to the people who actually get the construction contract to modify and make it even better; this is a jumping off point;

This is a design that was pretty much complete 5 years ago. We challenged design team to go back and relook at every aspect. As a result we were able to gain another 50% energy savings below what they had already gotten. We think we will push it even more.

We will discover a lot of things. During the renovation, we are moving half of our staff out into swing space. We are going to be experimenting on how people work including looking at more alternatives like hoteling and different ways of exploiting different ways of mobility and connectivity. We may discover in a couple of years—when they are ready to do interiors—that we may want something more bold, more radical that than what was before.

JE: OTFL: Can you describe what kind of building performance you are seeking?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: This is going to exceed every measurement we can.

First of all, we want this building to be exemplar as to what really can be done. Number two, if you think about it, one of the things we have to do with our portfolio is drop 30% of our energy consumption of the whole portfolio; so this building has to do a lot more than 30% because we don’t have enough money to renovate every single building to this extent.

We are expecting a 50%—I’m hoping for even more—reduction in energy consumption and it may be even greater.

When it comes to water conservation, we are putting some cisterns, hoping to capture and reuse 100% of rainfall. All rainwater that hits the building will go into cistern and be reused at least twice before hitting storm water system. We are reusing the grey water as well; using some for cooling tower evaporation and to flush toilets.

JE, OTFL: How are you going to demonstrate your successes—and failures if there are any?

Kevin Kampschroer, GSA: The headquarters are an integral component of GSA’s proving ground. So, we are going to prove it; we are going to publish everything and put out for everybody to use, not just other government agencies. This is something the private sector can use. We are working with National Labs across all the country and spreading the word.

Let’s talk about what works and what doesn’t, so people will know not to do what we did.

The proving ground is going to have at least one failure or partial success and we are going to have to recognize that. By taking this on we won’t be 100% successful, because if we always succeed we don’t push the knowledge envelope.

Our goal is by 2020, that all the buildings going into the pipeline will use no fossil fuel. We are still not sure how to do that for existing buildings; we want technological breakthroughs. We are driving to get as close to the definition of net zero as we can. 

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Challenge Yourself

Don’t sit on the sidelines, participate and challenge yourself and your organization to be more energy efficient. That's what GSA Administrator Martha Johnson is doing when with the goal of a net-zero environmental footprint for GSA, which she calls "GSA's moonshot".  

Diagnosis Green

DOE's Paul Scheihing and Will Linter provide agencies with Data Center assessment tools and help guide them to use funding more effectively in meeting their energy management objectives. 

Green Chronicles

Helping chronicle energy efficiency and renewable energy is longtime EERE Network News editor Kevin Eber. Read what Eber says is trending Green in the near future. 

The Lean Green Data Center Machine

Chuck Powers, IT Operations Director at NREL RSF shows how the new Data Center is consuming and providing energy as a part of the lab’s new net-zero sustainable green building. 

Green Proving Ground—Interview with GSA’s Kevin Kampschroer

In an On The FrontLines interview, the High Performance Buildings director describes why the renovation of the GSA HQ in DC will be a test bed for net-zero design and workplace flexibility. 

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