GSA seeks green tech to slash federal building emissions

The General Services Administration is moving to implement one of the goals set out in the Inflation Reduction Act by exploring technologies that can reduce the carbon footprint of federal buildings and vehicles.

In a new request for information, GSA and the Energy Department are looking for technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions of commercial buildings and vehicles. They also want to improve grid resiliency.

The technologies should have “significant potential for equitable and broad adoption in the U.S. marketplace,” according to the RFI.

Some examples of technologies that GSA is interested in include deep energy retrofits, all-electric buildings, all-electric vehicle fleets, net-zero operations, health and resilient buildings and low-embodied carbon building materials.

Low-embodied carbon building materials can be a range of products such as laminated timbers that can replace steel, low-carbon concrete, bio-based materials such as bamboo, straw and hemp, and the reuse of existing building materials.

GSA manages 8,800 buildings that cover approximately 370 million square feet of workspace.

GSA’s Center for Emerging Building Technologies is leading the effort in the RFI. The center has three related programs: the Green Proving Ground, the Applied Innovation Learning Lab, and Pilot-to-Portfolio.

The goal is to accelerate GSA’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions from federal buildings. The RFI also supports Energy Department efforts to reduce U.S. building emissions by 65% by 2035 and 90% by 2050.

Energy is interested in technologies such as high-efficiency retrofits, targeted electrification of specific end uses, and on-site renewable energy generation and storage solutions.

The RFI was published Thursday and comments are due Sept. 13.