The U.S. Department of Energy is awarding as much as $80 billion for 16 contracts covering energy efficiency, renewable energy and water conservation projects at federal facilities.

The DOE said this week it's making the awards under the Energy Savings Performance Contracts program.

Under such arrangements, a contractor designs, builds and secures the financing for an energy savings project. The government agency then pays the contractor over time from the savings resulting from lower utility bills.

As part of the deal, the contractor must guarantee that the energy improvement project will generate savings. In addition, the aggregate annual payments to the contractor are not exceed the amount the agency would have paid for utilities without the program. And contracts are capped at $5 billion over the life of each deal.

The following firms, all of which were previously designated as Energy Service Companies and eligible to compete for the contracts, were selected for the current contract awards:

o - Ameresco Inc. of Framingham, Mass.
o - Chevron Energy Solutions of Eagan, Minn.
o - Clark Realty Builders of Arlington, Va.
o - Consolidated Edison Solutions Inc. of White Plains, N.Y.
o - Constellation Energy Projects & Services Group Inc. of Baltimore, Md.
o - FPL Energy Service Inc. of North Palm Beach, Fla.
o - Honeywell International Inc. of Golden Valley, Minn.
o - Johnson Controls Government Systems LLC of Milwaukee, Wis.
o - Lockheed Martin Services Inc. of Cherry Hill, N.J.
o - McKinstry Essention Inc. of Seattle, Wash.
o - NORESCO LLC of Westborough, Mass.
o - Pepco Energy Services of Arlington, Va.
o - Siemens Government Services Inc. of Reston, Va.
o - TAC Energy Solutions of Seattle, Wash.
o - The Benham Companies LLC of Oklahoma City, Okla.
o - Trane U.S. Inc. of McEwen, Tenn.

The government has goals of reducing its energy intensity by 30 percent and cutting water use by 16 percent reduction by 2015 at federal facilities — in addition to bringing use of renewable energy to 7.5 percent by 2013.

The DOE says the Energy Savings Performance Contracts program allows the government to pursue efficiency projects to work toward those goals without footing the up-front costs and with the advantage of securing all savings from improvements after the contracts are paid.