San Francisco, California

This facility features the following green attributes:
LEED-EB 2.0 Gold Certification
Green Power
ENERGY STAR
Mechanical Upgrades

Region 9 Office

Total Facility Area: 227,745 rentable square feet
Estimated Personnel: 1,160 persons
Energy Consumption: 10,615,731,536 Btu per year (EPA share)
Btu per Rentable Square Foot per Year: 46,612
Water Consumption: not available

All energy and water data are reported as of FY 2004.

Description

EPA's Region 9 consists of four states and two U.S. Territories: Nevada, California, Arizona, Hawaii, Samoa, and Guam. EPA Region 9 also works with 147 federally recognized tribes in the Pacific Southwest.

The lease for this office is nearing its expiration date. Looking forward, EPA is working with the General Services Administration (GSA) to draft a Solicitation for Offers (SFO) for the San Francisco Region 9 Office. GSA has posted a notice of intent to lease and is reviewing potential offerors. SFO release and award schedule is still to be determined. The SFO will include requirements for sustainable features pulled from EPA’s Best Practices Lease Provisions. This document includes provisions to pursue compliance with EPAct 2005, the MOU, E.O. 13423, and EISA 2007, and obtain LEED certification for new and existing buildings.

Unique Environmental Features

Energy Conservation

The building in which the Region 9 office is currently located was awarded the ENERGY STAR® label in 2008 and again in 2009.
In October 2003, a new solar water heater was installed at the Region 9 Child Care and Fitness Center to offset the natural gas consumed by the previous gas-fired water heating system. Additional energy and water efficient features, such as high-efficiency showerheads and washing machines were installed to further reduce the facility's energy and water consumption, as well as reduce Region 9's utility bills.
The Region 9 office has a lighting efficiency project that results in average monthly energy savings of 35,000 kilowatt hours (kWh).
The Region 9 office also has a policy of turning off unused machines, such as coffee pots, unnecessary elevators, and personal printers. More than half of the computers are programmed to go into "sleep mode" after 30 minutes of non-use.

Green Power

In FY 2008, EPA continued to support the renewable energy market by purchasing more than 212 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of green power through two separate Agencywide blanket contracts for renewable energy certificates (RECs), or “green tags,” from Sterling Planet, Luminant Energy Company, and FPL Energy . These purchases allowed EPA to offset 100 percent of electricity consumption for FY 2008 at the Region 9 office, as well as many other EPA facilities across the Agency. Procured through the Defense Energy Support Center, these contracts support renewable energy generation from wind, biomass, and landfill gas resources in nine states.
In November 2004, EPA entered into a three-year contract (procured by the Western Area Power Administration ), with 3 Phases Energy Services , to purchase 2.3 million kWh of green power annually in the form of renewable energy certificates for the Region 9 Office, which offsets 100 percent of the facility's annual electricity use. This contract supports the generation of renewable, geothermal energy from The Geysers in Middletown, California. The Geysers, which is located approximately 100 miles north of San Francisco in the Mayacamas Mountains, consists of 19 geothermal plants with a generation capacity of 850 megawatts.

Green Building

In May 2009, Hawthorne Plaza, the building in which the Region 9 office is currently located, received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Gold certification for Existing Buildings version 2.0 (LEED-EB 2.0) from the U.S. Green Building Council. The LEED rating system is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

For More Information

David Wampler (wampler.david@epa.gov)
75 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Phone: (415) 972-3975

Web site: www.epa.gov/region9