ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- Robins' Energy Office started up three years ago, and its initial mission was largely to get people to turn off their computer monitors and the like at the end of the day.

While such conservation measures are important, meeting the base's energy reduction goals will take a much more expansive effort.

That's why the Energy Office has since widened its "sight picture," and is leaving no switch unflipped in its efforts to help Robins meet its energy goals.

The Energy Office has an all-encompassing role to include conservation and finding alternative energy sources, said Dave Bury, the project officer who's tracking Robins' energy progress.

"The awareness and conservation efforts in '07 and '08 were the only things going, but now we are getting energy audits done, developing plans, and getting projects funded which really reduce energy demand and processes in our buildings, and result in so-called 'permanent load changes,'" Bury said.

The office has also formed an "Energy Miser Team" to go in buildings and find cost-effective ways to cut energy costs. While the team was originally made up of the six members of the Energy Office, it has been expanded to include others from across the base, and more people are being recruited.

Judy Middlebrooks, an environmental engineer in the office, said the base is just too big for the Energy Office alone to examine every building and implement changes. It's hoping to get people in each building on board to help identify and correct inefficiencies.

The Energy Office is taking lessons learned from a thorough examination of energy use in Bldg. 905, the 78th Air Base Wing Headquarters, to other buildings on base, including two equally large office buildings - Bldgs. 300 and 301. At 500,000 square feet each, such seemingly small measures, such as turning down the heating and air system during off hours, will reap large rewards in those structures.

The Energy Office is also using some high-tech equipment such as infrared cameras to determine where buildings are losing heating and cooling.

While the office is busy with those efforts, Middlebrooks said there remains a need to emphasize the basics. It has done night audits of buildings and found people are still failing to turn off many items when they leave work.

"There still seems to be a big problem with that," she said.