The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2021 47 90 percent of our recycling material is reusable. As a result of our recycling success, we ultimately constructed a one-stop reposi- tory center on our Rome campus. The city was impressed with our center and assigned a specialty recycling subsidiary to work with the U.S. to manage the programmoving forward. Tri-Mission Rome has for several years been converting interior and exterior lighting systems to LED technology. Sixty percent of our functional space and 80 percent of our residences are now so equipped. The LED bulbs themselves cost more than regular incandescent bulbs, but due to increased life and lower energy consumption—LED consumption is 30-40 percent less than fluorescent bulbs—the long-term result is significant utilities savings. In a complex project that reduces both fuel consumption and water runoff, we redesigned our deteriorating asphalt parking lot (approximately 100 parking spaces) to include permeable paving under the parking spots, and installed electric charging stations for our new hybrid, government-owned vehicles. Asphalt and concrete are materials that absorb and retain heat and contribute to “urban heat islands,” increasing energy costs (e.g., for air condi- tioning), air-pollution levels and heat-related illness andmortality. Our green parking lot provides onsite stormwater management by allowing infiltration of runoff into the ground during storm events, thus greatly reducing runoff volume and rate, eliminating it entirely from small storm events and capturing up to 80 percent of runoff from larger events. The charging stations will signifi- cantly reduce reliance on fossil fuels for our official vehicles. One usually does not think of an elevator renovation as a way to reduce power consumption, but that is exactly what we did at the Tri-Mission. We replaced our chancery eleva- tors, installed in the early 1990s and experiencing seriously degraded performance. The new elevators use an energy-effi- cient traction system, reducing power demand by 50 percent, and are equipped with a regenerative drive that recovers the elevators’ braking energy (otherwise dissipated as heat on the electrical resistances). After converting the recovered energy to electric energy, the regenerative drive sends it back to the building electrical system to be used on other applications, consequently reducing elevator electric consumption by 20 percent. It seems complex, but the principles are really quite simple. Technology is enabling us to do incredible things with the right engineering. A Tri-Mission Italy facility maintenance van is charged at one of the mission’s four electric-car charging stations in Rome. This “green” parking lot made of grass and pavers helps to disperse heat and facilitates rainwater management during storm events. U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE/TRI-MISSION ITALY U.S.DEPARTMENTOFSTATE/TRI-MISSION ITALY