Federal Agencies Release Their Sustainability and Energy Scorecards

• Photo: State Department scorecard; see full card here.

For U.S. energy advocates, April 19 was a pivotal day as 24 federal agencies and departments released for the first time their Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Sustainability and Energy scorecards. The scorecards allow agencies to target and then track opportunities for improving efficiency, reducing pollution and eliminating waste.

These scorecards are an initiative stemming from Executive Order 13514. President Obama tasked federal agencies to lead by example. “To meet the President’s ambitious energy and environmental goals, agencies need to know where they stand,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “The agency benchmarks established in these scorecards provide a useful measuring stick to help agencies stay on target to save billions in energy costs over the next decade.”

Measuring Success

The scorecards assess agencies on sustainability areas such as energy intensity, greenhouse gas pollution, green building practices and renewable energy use. Agencies are also evaluated on their continued progress in achieving future or additional goals, such as “buying green” or reducing fleet petroleum use as reflected in their annual Sustainability Plans. These plans are posted publicly on agencies' websites and include information for further improvements. A simple evaluation system ensures that the scorecards are easy to understand: green for success, yellow for mixed results and red for unsatisfactory results.

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said Jeff Zients, OMB Deputy Director for Management and Chief Performance Officer. Keeping agencies on track with the scorecards could save the government between $8 billion to $11 billion by 2020, added Zients.

Agency Highlights from 2010

• At the Department of Energy, more than 75% of headquarter vehicles are fuel-efficient, alternative fuel vehicles or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
• Seventeen national parks – including the National Mall, Washington, D.C., and Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado – purchased 9,100 megawatt hours of renewable electricity from their utility providers.
• The State Department broke ground for a new, LEED Gold data center

 For links to each agency’s OMB scorecard, visit the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality.