WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US Capitol complex of buildings, which houses the Senate and House of Representatives, fails to provide inexpensive and efficient electricity, and its energy plan needs to be updated and modernized, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.
The office of the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) "decided to procure a cogeneration system to produce electricity and steam based on a 2009 long-term plan and subsequent partial updates, but did not follow key leading federal capital-planning practices," the report, issued on Thursday, explained.
AOC's planning, the report noted, did not follow key leading capital-planning practices developed by GAO and the Office of Management and Budget.
"AOC has not fully updated the 2009 long-term plan, although changes in key planning assumptions, such as on fuel prices and the complex's demand for energy, have occurred," the report pointed out.
The GAO observed that modernization updates approved in 2014 did not include complete information on the need or problem that the project would address.
Also, "the 2014 updates did not identify a full range of options for cost-effectively meeting projected future needs… [and] did not have valid sensitivity or uncertainty analyses to test key assumptions about whether the system would achieve sufficient savings over time… to justify its costs," the report said.
Without updating its long-term energy plan and obtaining independent review, AOC may pursue a project that does not cost-effectively meet its needs, the GAO concluded.
The US Government Accountability Office is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress and investigates how the US federal government spends taxpayer money.
