The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is a leader in energy efficiency for good reason—it is mandated to reduce energy use on its properties by 30% by 2015 and by another 37.5% by 2020. Three years ago, a team of leading metal construction companies and the Metal Construction Association (MCA) were awarded a $1 million grant to develop a retrofit metal roof system for a DOD building with integrated renewable energy technologies. Today, Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, TX, boasts a retrofit metal roofing system that integrates a host of solar energy-saving technologies and the ability to capture rainwater for irrigation purposes. View the case study of the project for more complete information.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is monitoring the building’s temperature and heat information. According to Scott Kriner, MCA technical director, both the DOD and the project team “are confident that this integrated retrofit roof system will perform as predicted and allow for the technology to be transferred throughout the DOD, to other federal agencies, and into the commercial-building sector.”

ORNL should be completing a year-long study of the building’s energy data in 2013 to quantify the impact of the metal roof retrofit project. Stay tuned–we will post more information to this site as it becomes available.