Washington, D.C., October 5, 2009 – “We applaud President Obama’s latest action to get his federal house in order and to ensure that his government practices what it is preaching to businesses and consumers across America – namely to stop energy and water waste,” said Alliance to Save Energy President Kateri Callahan.

“President Obama’s issuance of today’s Executive Order is yet another large and important step toward creation of a new, clean energy economy for America, which he began with significant funding from the economic stimulus bill for energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and which we hope will culminate in the enactment of meaningful climate and energy legislation before the end of the year.

“President Obama is following the ‘recipe for success’ in cutting waste and greenhouse gas emissions that has been innovated by leading companies around the world that have put in place an integrated strategy and tough but achievable goals for energy and water use and then have measured, evaluated, and judged performance of employees based upon success in meeting the targets.

Callahan concluded: “As always, energy efficiency is a win-win policy for our economy, our national security, and the world’s environment, and with the stroke of the President’s pen today, energy efficiency also will be a win for America’s taxpayers, who will see their ‘bill’ for the government’s energy and water use go down as the efficiency and sustainability targets are met.”

The Executive Order is significant in many respects, the Alliance said. It emphasizes using federal buying power to motivate vendors, contractors, and others in the federal supply chain to take their own actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions in production, operations, and transport. The Alliance noted that those vendors could also apply such limitations to their own suppliers, as Wal-Mart and other private sector leaders have done.

Other commendable elements of the Executive Order include:

• Making public the annual “scorecard” results for each agency – an important step towards public accountability and ensuring that the provisions of the order remain as priorities for federal agency managers.
• Re-instituting the Presidential Leadership Awards, an important step in underscoring the president’s priority on individual and agency leadership in energy efficiency and sustainability within the federal government.
• Creating sustainability officers for each agency.

“The challenge going forward is to provide agencies with the resources – appropriations, technical assistance, and direction from agency heads – that will enable them to meet the mandates,” Callahan said, adding: “We look forward to working with agencies and the administration to turn all of these urgent goals into immediate reality.”