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GAO-16-153R 1 (2016-01-12)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaajnw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 January 12, 2016 Congressional Committees Defense Infrastructure: DOD Efforts Regarding Net Zero Goals In 2008, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE) began a joint initiative to address military energy use by identifying specific actions to reduce energy demand and increase use of renewable energy on DOD installations. Early attention was given to the possibility of net zero energy military installations. Achieving net zero within DOD generally means producing as much energy from renewable energy sources as is consumed by an installation, limiting the consumption of water in order to not deplete the local watershed, and reducing, reusing, and recovering waste streams to add zero waste to landfills. House Report 114-102, accompanying a bill for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, included a provision for us to review DOD's progress and savings from net zero installation initiatives. This report describes the extent to which DOD: (1) developed policies and goals for an integrated net zero strategy for energy, water, and waste management at its military installations; and (2) identified the potential costs and benefits of implementing net zero initiatives. We briefed the congressional defense committees in October 2015. This report formally transmits updated briefing slides regarding the final results of our work in response to the provision in House Report 114-102 (see encl. I). To conduct our work, we obtained and reviewed relevant federal mandates, statutes, and DOD and service-specific policies and reports to determine DOD's net zero strategy and goals for energy, water, and waste management. We also interviewed or requested information from relevant officials within DOD and the services about funding, monitoring, potential costs and benefits, and lessons learned. We visited the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Fort Carson, CO and contacted 10 Army installations to obtain information regarding policies, goals, potential costs, and benefits of implementing net zero initiatives.1 We conducted this performance audit from June 2015 to January 2016 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. In summary, we found that DOD has not established an integrated net zero strategy or policy. DOD officials stated that this is because until recently there had been no statutory goals 1We visited Fort Carson, CO because it is one of two installations the Army identified as a pilot for energy, water, and waste management. We also obtained information from 10 additional installations, selected based on their progress toward meeting energy, water, and solid waste diversion goals in fiscal year 2014. Though this information was not generalizable to all installations, these installations were: Carlisle Barracks, PA; Fort Detrick, MD; Fort Hood, TX; Fort Hunter Liggett, CA; Fort Irwin, CA; Fort Jackson, SC; Fort Leavenworth, KS; Fort Riley, KS; Joint Base Lewis- McChord, WA, and Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. GAO-16-153R DOD Net Zero Goals Page 1

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