Green Power Partnership

Collaborative Procurement Initiative

The Initiative:

Supported by EPA's Green Power Partnership, this initiative provides a collaborative platform for deploying clean energy technologies across multiple government and educational organizations for maximum impact on installed solar system capacity, local economic activity, and the regional environment.

The Challenge:

The public sector's adoption of clean energy technologies is often hampered by barriers of high upfront costs associated with the purchase and installation of these technologies and a history of administrative roadblocks in the development of successful purchase agreements.

The Goal:

To realize regional aggregated clean energy procurement at scale, by addressing the administrative, developmental, and upfront cost barriers of clean technology procurement.

The Rationale:

EPA seeks to replicate on a national level a regional collaborative model for clean energy procurement that was first pioneered in California and demonstrated that significant energy, environmental, and financial benefits can be achieved by way of optimizing and aligning the organizational procurement processes and project attributes of like organizations with the core capabilities of local project developers.

Benefits to Participants:

  • Conserve government funds available for capital equipment.
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from local government operations.
  • Reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
  • Stabilize the cost of electrical energy during a time when we expect prices to rise sharply (hedge against rising and volatile electricity rates).
  • Reduce the cost of photovoltaic systems through volume purchasing/aggregated projects.
  • Reduce vendor costs through economics of scale and standardization of purchasing methods.
  • Help smaller cities leverage technical expertise using a shared collaborative resource pool.
  • Minimize workload for cities through the use of turnkey installations of solar systems, including financing, installation, maintenance, and operation.
  • Support/stimulate the creation of local clean tech jobs.
  • Encourage use of local technologies and resources.

For more information about this initiative contact
James Critchfield
critchfiled.james@epa.gov
202-343-9442