Federal managers must begin measuring agencies' greenhouse gas emissions and set targets for reducing them under an ambitious plan the White House laid out last week to make the government more energy efficient.

Other goals require agencies to purchase green products and services, cut fuel and water consumption and develop plans to make operations environmentally sustainable.

The executive order, signed Oct. 5 by President Barack Obama, "is going to make all of us look at everything we do with a new eye," said Jeff Eagen, who coordinates the Energy Department's efforts to make its computers and other electronics more efficient.

Front-line employees could be asked to work from home more frequently to save on gas consumption. Property and energy managers will be assigned renewable energy projects, such as installing solar panels or windmills. Travel managers will need to look at videoconferencing or selecting hotels and conference centers that offset their own carbon emissions. Federal buyers will have to work with vendors and contractors to adopt changes to manufacturing, transportation and supply-chain activities to reduce emissions. Financial managers will be in charge of reviewing all of the proposals and selecting ones thatgenerate the biggest return on an agency's investment.

The executive order builds on the progress agencies already have made to cut energy and fuel consumption and sets them on a new path to improve the environment, say administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"If you look at the size and scale of the federal government, we're the largest energy consumer in the country. ... There's an extraordinary opportunity for leadership," one official said.

Big step to measure footprint

The requirement to measure, report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions — the government's carbon footprint — marks a significant step up from existing energy mandates, which focus on cutting energy consumed and increasing renewable energy produced and used.

Greenhouse gas emissions cut across virtually everything agencies manage, produce, purchase, operate and discard. For that reason, calculating emissions and then taking steps to reduce them present a significant logistical challenge that will require input and buy-in from nearly everyone in government.

Each agency has until Jan. 4 to propose a target for how much it will reduce by 2020 its emissions from sources owned or controlled by the agency, such as from agency-owned vehicles, and indirect emissions generated by the purchase of electricity. Those emissions are known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.

By June 2, agencies must propose similar 2020 reduction targets for indirect emissions from other sources. Those are known as Scope 3 emissions and include such activities as the production and use of purchased materials.

Agency reduction goals will be based on 2008 baselines, which agencies must determine as the first step toward setting reduction targets. The proposed reduction goals will be reviewed and approved by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget.

Those targets will be used to develop aggregate governmentwide targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House dropped a previous proposal to require agencies to cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Some agencies likely will set targets beyond 20 percent, while others will fall short of that mark, said Cyndi Vallina, OMB deputy associate administrator.

"Each agency has different things to contribute, and we want them to have some flexibility on how much they can contribute toward the federal goal," Vallina said Oct. 6 at a green computing conference in Washington.

There were additional reasons for nixing the 20 percent target, officials said. The White House was wary of setting a percentage target for federal agencies before Congress developed an emissions reduction target for the nation. Also, there was a belief that setting a percentage target would dissuade some agencies from striving for additional reductions.

"If you put [a specific goal] in there, nobody's going to strive to go higher," one official said.

Another official said differences in missions and facility types made setting a governmentwide target counterintuitive.

"Some agencies are land management, some are administrative and have lots of buildings, some agencies actually have processes akin to industrial processes that they're managing. We wanted to make sure that we were setting the bar high enough. … The best way to do that was to challenge agencies to look deeply at their portfolio and ante up," the official said.

Other goals ratcheted up

Beyond the carbon footprint mandate, Obama's executive order expands on many existing mandates to make government operations more environmentally friendly. Most agencies have met existing mandates to cut energy and water consumption and are making progress to purchase green products, although the goals will become more challenging as agencies pick off the low-hanging fruit and are left with more costly and difficult remedies, experts say.

Immediately, agencies must ensure that 95 percent of new contracts, task orders and delivery orders for all products and services except for weapon systems meet federal environmental sustainability requirements.

This requirement expands on an existing mandate related to computers, monitors and other electronic devices that have been certified green by the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) program. The 95 percent goal now also applies to available products that are energy-efficient, made of agricultural or biological materials, nonozone depleting, nontoxic or containing recycled content.

Another new mandate requires agencies to reduce landscaping, agricultural and industrial water use by 2 percent annually by 2020, compared with a 2010 baseline. Previous water reduction mandates pertained only to potable water.

The executive order also requires agencies by 2015 to recycle or otherwise divert from landfills at least half of all nonhazardous solid waste and half of construction and demolition materials and debris.

In addition to new mandates, the order extends by five years existing requirements to cut gasoline consumption by 2 percent annually through 2020, compared with 2005 baselines, and cut potable water use by 2 percent annually through 2020, compared with 2007 baselines.

Tell us what you think. E-mail Tim Kauffman.