The Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) is pleased to release historical energy use and cost data for the Federal Government for the fiscal years 1975 through 2007.  Data for later years will be released in the near future, but for now, are considered preliminary as the method for collecting the data changed last year to accommodate the 2008 baseline of the Federal greenhouse gas goals under Executive Order 13514.  The consumption and cost data is available for each major Federal Department or agency and is divided into two main end-use sectors:  facility energy use and mobility energy use.  Each of these end-use sectors is comprised of multiple energy types, for example electricity and natural gas under facility energy; gasoline and jet fuel under mobility energy.  The common unit used for all of these different forms of energy is site-delivered Btu (British Thermal Units), but the data is also presented in the native units of consumption per energy type (megawatthours for electricity or thousands of gallons of gasoline, for example). Costs are shown in terms of constant 2010 dollars to account for inflation of the economy overall.

Here are some of the more interesting trends in Federal Government energy use over the period 1975 through 2007:

• Overall, the Federal Government had reduced its energy use by 31% since 1975, that's 35% less energy used in the facility sector and 28% less in the mobility sector.
• Across both end-use sectors, petroleum-based energy use declined 38% and in the facility sector fell a remarkable 85%.
• Electricity use in Government facilities has increased by 36% since 1975 even though total facility energy use declined 35%; this is indicative of the increased role of technology in use in the workplace and the associated plug-load required.

Other insights that can be gleaned from this data include the portion of energy used by a particular agency.  The Department of Defense, for example, uses almost 80% of the Federal Government's energy to fulfill its mission of defending the Nation.  In fact, 42% of the energy used by the Federal Government is in the form of jet fuel used by DOD.

The tabs in the posted Excel workbook are self-explanatory and include a list of the agency names and abbreviations.  We invite you to examine the data more closely, whether your interest is a particular agency's energy use, changes in fuel mix across years, or trends in the use of particular types of energy.

Chris Tremper
Federal Energy Management Program
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy