Massive Energy Savings Project Underway at Coast Guard Academy

NEW LONDON, Conn., -- An unprecedented energy savings project is underway at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that will include onsite energy generation, reduce energy consumption, add renewable energy and enhance energy resilience across the 85-year-old campus.

The $72.6 million contract will bring $39 million in capital improvements to the institution and is designed to result in more than a $2 million reduction in annual energy costs. The project, which is funded through energy cost savings, is the largest Utility Energy Service Contract (UESC) ever awarded by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The project will substantively modernize the institution’s energy infrastructure in partnership with Eversource Energy, impacting facilities that span the barracks to the academic laboratories. The facility's fuel-oil-fired boiler plant, will be replaced with a high-efficiency combined heat and power (CHP) natural gas plant. The CHP will generate 1 Megawatt of electricity onsite with a microturbine generator, another Coast Guard first. The project also includes expanding the central chiller plant, implementing numerous energy and water conservation measures and lighting improvements and the installation of rooftop solar arrays.

"When the construction is complete, the Academy will reduce total electricity imported from the grid by nearly 80%,” said Rear Admiral Melvin Bouboulis, the Coast Guard's chief engineer. “The appreciable benefit to the neighborhood and region could not have been possible without the two years of planning and design efforts and the partnership between our Coast Guard engineers, Eversource Energy management and the technical team from Ameresco."

The Academy has been located in New London since 1910. The institution moved from nearby Fort Trumbull to its present location on the West Bank of the Thames River in 1932.