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Last month, USDA Rural Development employees and several partner organizations donated their Saturday to celebrate Earth Day with elementary and middle school-aged children at the Castle Rock farm worker housing complex in Boardman, Oregon.

Volunteers from Energy Trust of Oregon, CASA of Oregon, Sustainable Agriculture and Energy (SAGE) Center, Wind Turbine Industries Corporation, and Kardon Construction joined USDA to lead a variety of interactive educational activities about energy conservation and renewable energy alternatives.

On a beautiful summer morning, more than 200 Bridgewater faculty, staff, students and local residents celebrated the completion of a $14 million dollar student housing project on the rural campus of Bridgewater College.

The new “Stone Village” as named by the college for its past President, Mr. Phillip Stone, will be a complex of five, two-story, colonial-designed housing that will be on the cutting edge of energy efficiency and minimize its environmental impact on the rural campus. The housing is registered as a potential Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver project and incorporates such green features as high efficiency HVAC, occupancy sensor lighting, recycled building materials and even the interior paints that were used were all environmentally friendly to improve indoor air quality.

Earlier this week I participated in an Obama Administration Clean Energy Economy Forum in Arlington, Virginia with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewables Cathy Zoi, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, and former U.S. Senator John Warner.

As you walk through the facilities at headquarters in Washington and in the field, it quickly becomes apparent that a new attitude has taken hold at USDA: A drive to use energy more efficiently.  These efforts were noted by President Obama and the White House Council on Environmental Quality recently when USDA was chosen as one of six departments (and seven teams) in the Government to receive a Presidential Award for Leadership in Federal Energy Management.  USDA won the award for reducing energy and water use through tools including energy savings performance contracts, utility service con