On September 23, 2013, the U.S. Army Engineering & Support Center in Huntsville, Alabama, acting in conjunction with the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force, issued its final round of awards under the multi-award task order contract for renewable and alternative energy issued last summer (Solicitation Number W912DY-11-R-0036, the “MATOC”). The Army received 52 proposals in the biomass category under the MATOC and awarded thirteen (13) indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts to developers in the space, four (4) of which were to small businesses. The EITF press release can be found here. Awards in the geothermal, wind, and solar categories were made earlier this year.
As pre-qualification under the MATOC wraps up, it is important to remember that the MATOC is not the only contracting vehicle that the Department of Defense is using to construct large-scale renewable energy projects. While public attention has largely been drawn to the MATOC, the Army, Navy, and the Defense Logistics Agency (“DLA”)-Energy have been pushing forward with specific procurements and requests for information at places like Fort Huachuca in Arizona, Fort Irwin in California, Fort Detrick in Maryland, and NAWS China Lake in California.