My cover story in this week’s Federal Times details the federal government’s new goal to cut indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent during the next decade. The bulk of the story explains the impact on federal workers — more telecommuting, fewer business trips out of state, increased recycling and energy conservation efforts. But as I mention in the article, this is just part of a much larger undertaking to measure and shrink the government’s entire carbon footprint, including the energy used in federal facilities and vehicles. Under an October executive order from President Obama, all agencies must undertake their…
Browsing: greenhouse gas emissions
When I polled the 15 Cabinet departments for a March 8 article detailing the government’s carbon footprint and plans to reduce it, one department failed to respond: the Health and Human Services Department. Now, I think I understand why. According to information just provided to me by the department, HHS has set a goal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 10.4 percent by 2020, compared to a 2008 baseline of more than 1.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. HHS’ target is lower than that of any other Cabinet department and much lower than the governmentwide average of 28…
The White House just announced that the federal government will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020, compared to 2008 benchmarks. The ambitious federal target is the aggregate of percentage reduction targets reported by 35 federal agencies earlier this month. President Obama ordered agencies in an October executive order to begin measuring and reducing their carbon footprints, the first such comprehensive effort by the federal government. I’ll be sitting in on a conference call at 11 a.m. with administration officials to discuss the initiative. Check back at www.federaltimes.com for a full report.
President Barack Obama issued an executive order this afternoon that requires agencies for the first time to measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Obama nixed an earlier idea, included in a draft executive order I reported on back in August, to set a governmentwide percentage target. Instead, each agency must recommend its own target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It will be up to the heads of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget to approve those targets. Obama’s order also sets new requirements for cutting gas and water consumption, reducing landfill waste and…