SACRAMENTO, Calif – State and Consumer Services Agency (SCSA) Secretary Rosario Marin and Department of General Services (DGS) Director Will Bush announced today that the steelwork is complete on the state’s new “green” central plant.  Marin and Bush were on hand at a “topping out” ceremony where the last piece of steel was put into place.  Since November, more than 300 construction workers have been working to build a more environmentally friendly plant to heat and cool state office buildings in downtown Sacramento. 

In keeping with Gov. Schwarzenegger’s 2004 Executive Order that directed the “greening” of state buildings, the new central plant will be built to achieve the Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Environmental Design (LEED®) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. 

“California continues to lead the nation in fighting climate change and this new central plant is leading by example to reduce our state’s carbon footprint,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “It is very exciting that this new facility is being built to the Gold standard and our state will save energy and reduce resource use while protecting the environment.” 

Each day, the existing plant provides the steam and chilled water to heat and cool more than 5.5 million square feet of office space in the state Capitol and 22 other state-owned buildings in the downtown core. 

“This new plant is an exciting green investment that will help us cut our water usage and save energy,” said SCSA Secretary Marin.  “State workers expect reliable heating and cooling each day when they come to work and this new central plant will help us achieve that.”

The construction project is on track and the new central plant will be operational in May 2009.  The existing plant was built in 1968 and is the largest such plant west of the Mississippi River.  Over the past 40 years since it was built, the current facility has nearly reached its operating capacity as construction of new state buildings in the Capitol area has increased nearly 24 percent.  Last summer, a chiller went down, causing DGS to bring in portable chiller units to maintain temperatures in state buildings.

The new central plant will incorporate the latest technological advances to help the state reduce its energy costs and greatly reduce the amount of water needed within the plant. The new facility will have cooling towers to release heat pulled from state buildings and will also feature a 140-foot-tall, 4.25 million gallon, thermal energy storage tank to store reserves of necessary chilled water for the plant operations during off-peak energy demand times. The more technologically advanced new central plant will use only 1/10th of the water needed by the existing plant.  Solar panels will also be installed on the new facility to power the energy needs of the office space within it.

“Our general contractor Skanska and its team of workers have done an outstanding job of keeping this important project on track and within our budget,” said DGS Director Bush.  “We need more reliability and redundancy in our heating and cooling operations and this plant will help us achieve that while also reducing our impact on the environment.”

 The new central plant is being designed and constructed by the design/builder, Skanska USA Building, Inc., with local Sacramento firm Nacht and Lewis Architects, San Francisco’s Flack and Kurtz, plus Lawson Mechanical and Redwood City Electric and a host of other designers and subcontractors working with the state and its major consultants, Capitol Engineering Consultants, Inc. and Lionakis Beaumont Design Group, and Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc.  The project will include the recycling of much of the demolition material from the old central plant, which will be torn down following construction of the new facility.

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