Generate on site, on land you already own
The cheapest renewable energy is the kind that uses real estate you're already paying for. At the Houston VA Medical Center, Alares provided construction management and commissioning for a 5.0 MW solar photovoltaic carport system across the campus parking lots, a roughly $21M build that turns existing asphalt into generation and shaded parking at the same time. Carport PV is a recurring net-zero workhorse precisely because the land is already on the books.
Make the central plant do more with less fuel
On a campus, the central plant is where the biggest carbon swings live. A new combined heat and power (CHP) plant at the Newington VA, which Alares managed and commissioned, generates electricity on site and uses that heat to drive an absorption chiller for campus cooling, capturing energy that a conventional setup throws away. Modernizing and consolidating plants, as we did at the Mather VA by combining aging boilers into a single efficient central plant, cuts the fuel burned to do the same work.
Prove out the bigger bets before you fund them
Some of the largest reductions come from resources under your feet, but only if they're real. At the Reno VA, Alares ran a direct-use geothermal feasibility study, designing and installing a test well to 2,200 feet, running static and dynamic thermal production testing, and clearing the environmental review to a Finding of No Significant Impact, which confirmed geothermal heating as a viable option for the campus. Feasibility work like this is how a federal owner de-risks a major sustainability investment before committing capital to it.
Don't skip the cheapest carbon of all: efficiency
Before you generate a clean kilowatt, stop wasting the dirty ones you already buy. Commissioning and retrocommissioning are the lowest-cost reductions available, no new equipment, just systems tuned to run right. As commissioning oversight on an Energy Savings Performance Contract across five VISN 12 campuses, our team verified steam-trap replacements, controls upgrades, air handler replacements and a central chiller plant replacement, the measures that make an ESPC actually deliver its promised savings. Efficiency is also a design choice: the 100% outside-air heat pump system we designed at the Bedford VA research building cut its energy costs by about 35 percent.
The honest version of net-zero
You don't reach net-zero on a federal campus by writing one big check. You reach it by funding solar where you have land, generating on site where the plant allows, proving out geothermal before you commit, and commissioning everything so it runs the way it was designed to. Each move stands on its own business case. Together, they bend the curve, on a real budget.