Berkeley County IRS Data Center Will Transition Away From Fossil Fuels

A national data hub in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle will soon transition away from fossil fuels and toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Located in the Berkeley County community of Kearneysville, the Enterprise Computing Center (ECC) is one of the largest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data centers, processing data for taxpayers across the United States.

Running the 1,800-kilowatt facility requires major energy usage. New federal funding at the site aims to help it become more energy efficient.

On Oct. 29, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the facility received a $2.2 million grant to begin its transition away from fossil fuels. It marks an early step toward a larger $23 million project that will take place at the site in the coming years.

The federal investment will allow the facility to electrify its heating and hot water systems, and later implement heat pump cooling technologies, according to a DOE project description. The department estimates these changes will “reduce utility energy consumption by 34 percent, saving $1.3 million annually.”

Groundwork for the project was laid in 2020, when the DOE issued the facility a $500,000 grant for a study on the project’s implementation and effects, according to Tyler Harris with the DOE Federal Energy Management Program.

Harris serves as director of the Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies (AFFECT) Program, which selects grant recipients like the ECC and distributes their funding. Since its founding in 2014, Harris said the AFFECT program has led a national effort to help federal facilities pursue cheaper and more efficient energy resources.

“If a building needs fuel oil, natural gas and electricity to keep it running, suddenly you need to back up three different fuel sources,” Harris said. “But if you can turn the whole building so it’s 100 percent electricity, then you only need to back up one source of fuel.”

By streamlining energy consumption, protecting a facility’s energy reserves could be as simple as using batteries or on-site solar panels, Harris said.

“Changing buildings to all electric is something that the federal government is really pushing, because it really allows agencies to meet their mission long term, and provides resiliency that they need,” he said.

Harris said the $2.2 million grant is “the base project” for a facility-wide energy transition at the ECC. The wider project is privately funded, but receives millions in additional funds for the energy costs it saves by transitioning to a cheaper energy source, he said.

The ECC was one of 67 federal facilities that received AFFECT funding this year around the country. Other projects ranged from wind energy installations to geothermal heat pumps, with the goal of turning sites into “all-electric buildings,” Harris said.

The AFFECT program awarded a total of $149.87 million to projects in 28 states and six international sites this year. It was funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021.

Federal administrators hope it can promote energy security in light of emerging environmental concerns.

“It is imperative that federal facilities are able to operate in the face of increasingly intense extreme weather events,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in the Oct. 29 DOE press release.

While no other projects in West Virginia received funding this year, the DOE Legacy Management Business Center in Morgantown previously received funding for its own study on how to transition the building toward electric energy.

Harris said positive impacts from the ECC project can extend beyond the facility itself.

“Allowing this project to happen in this particular facility will not only improve air quality in the direct area, but it also provides jobs,” he said. “Not only for construction, but long-term maintenance of these new and emerging technologies.”

A timeline for the project’s implementation has not yet been announced. Harris said processing funding can take up to 18 months, and that completing the project could take up to an additional two years.