State human services overhaul aims to cut utility costs by $46 million

The department announced the work on Nov. 5, saying it had partnered with Schneider Electric, the Department of Facilities Management and the Department of Personnel and Administration. The facilities in the program cover 2.8 million square feet, and the work runs through an energy performance contract, under which the savings on utility bills carry the cost of the upgrades.

The buildings in the program are not offices alone. The department counts psychiatric hospitals among them, along with group homes for people with disabilities, centers that serve young people, living facilities for veterans and a number of historic buildings, spread across the state. The retrofits are meant to improve how those buildings run day to day, not only what they cost to operate.

The program includes two solar photovoltaic arrays. The department dates the array at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo to October 2026, and the second array, at Fort Logan, is set to go live in June 2027. The department said the two installations, which convert sunlight into electricity, will together offset 25 percent of its electric use.

The water work runs across 15 campuses, where smart irrigation systems and low flow plumbing fixtures are being installed. The department projects that those measures will reduce its water usage by 28 percent, a larger share than the electricity offset, and it counted the water result among the places where the program passed the state's own conservation goals.

Lighting and heating work sits behind the solar and water items. The program replaces 46,000 light fixtures with energy efficient LED luminaires, a change the department expects to reduce energy consumption by about 9.7 percent. Failed components of the central heating plant system at the Pueblo mental health hospital are being replaced to improve heating efficiency, and the department said it has secured more than $366,000 in utility rebates from a number of utility providers.

The department placed the work inside the Polis administration's Greening Government initiative, which advances energy efficiency and renewable energy across state facilities. Gov. Jared Polis said the modernization helps the state toward a grid powered entirely by renewable energy by 2040, while saving money on energy, reducing emissions and using water more efficiently. Interim executive director Minna Castillo said the department's commitment reaches the environments where the people it serves live, and Peyton Pratt of Schneider Electric said the department set an ambitious target and passed it, with the water reduction going beyond the state's conservation goals.

The contract model has a history in state policy. Executive Order D 2022 016, the 2022 restatement of the Greening Government program, told state agencies to cut the energy used per square foot in their buildings by 15 percent or more by the end of fiscal year 2024-25, against a fiscal year 2014-15 baseline, and to have energy performance contracting feasibility studies done for state facilities by the end of fiscal year 2023-24. The department said that once its program is fully implemented in 2026, it will contribute significantly to the Greening Government goals on energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation in public facilities.