The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has entered into a contract with IBM, the company announced Monday, May 21, to roll out smart building technology via a cloud platform for 50 federal government buildings that have been identified as high consumers of energy.
The effort that is expected to save $15 million annually in energy costs.
The GSA is responsible for overseeing the management and leasing of 9,600 federal buildings across the country, 1,500 of which are GSA-owned facilities — equal to 182 million square feet of space. An executive order from President Barack Obama has ordered a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption in government buildings by 2015.
So to meet that requirement, the GSA soon will select 50 of its highest-consuming energy buildings to be integrated into the smart technology system. The technology will integrate energy management systems to optimize efficiency, said Adam Elkington, a GSA spokesman.
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