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Regular Session, 2012 ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 171
BY SENATORS GALLOT AND WHITE
A RESOLUTION
To urge and request the Department of Natural Resources, in conjunction with the Public
Service Commission, to adopt rules and regulations to ensure high levels of energy
security in critical government facilities through implementation of on-site combined
heat and power systems.
WHEREAS, government buildings or facilities, including but not limited to
command and control centers, hospitals, shelters, prisons, jails, police and fire stations,
communications centers, data centers, water and wastewater facilities, hazardous waste
storage facilities, biological research facilities, food preparation and food storage facilities,
and institutions of higher education represent critical government facilities; and
WHEREAS, these critical government facilities serve a critical function related to
public health or safety during natural disasters and other emergency situations resulting in
widespread outages of the electrical grid; and
WHEREAS, critical government facilities may be anticipated to be occupied on a
twenty-four-hour-per-day basis, maintain operations in excess of six thousand hours per
year, and have a peak electricity demand exceeding five hundred kilowatts; and
WHEREAS, critical government facilities would greatly benefit from combined heat
and power systems, which is a technology that is located on the site of the facility,
continuously provides electricity and thermal energy used by the facility, can provide one
hundred percent of the facility's critical electricity needs required to sustain emergency
operations for a minimum of fourteen days and provides an overall efficiency of energy use
in excess of sixty percent; and
WHEREAS, when constructing or extensively renovating a critical governmental
facility or replacing major heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning equipment for a critical
governmental facility, the entity with charge and control of the facility would benefit in SR NO. 171 ENROLLED
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terms of energy efficiency and operating costs by evaluating whether equipping the facility
with a combined heating and power system would result in expected energy savings that
would exceed the expected costs of purchasing, operating, and maintaining the system over
a twenty-year period.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
does hereby urge and request the Department of Natural Resources, in conjunction with the
Public Service Commission, to adopt rules and regulations to establish guidelines for
equipping critical government facilities with a combined heating and power system if the
expected energy savings exceed the expected costs.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to the
secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and the executive secretary of the Public
Service Commission.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE