Perhaps Washington D.C. should have had a place on that shame map, after all — considering how much money the federal government wastes on electricity inside the city’s borders. WUSA9’s Andrea McCarren decided to investigate how much it costs to keep the lights on overnight at a dozen downtown federal buildings, including the Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and, yes, Energy. According to McCarren, the “low end is about $200,000 a month. The high end more than a million.” And “one month’s electricity bill at the Department of Labor topped a MILLION dollars.” It’s easy to be distracted by the homeyness of McCarren’s story, what with the capitalization of million and the reactions from people on the street, which ranged from “Whew” to “Whoooo” — but it’s pretty obvious that with electric bills regularly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the federal government’s got some ‘splanin’ to do. One agency who probably doesn’t mind the extra charges? Pepco, who provides a large amount of that electricity to the feds.

Argh! If only there was some kind of checklist which could provide some kind of tips for government offices to not waste so much power, maybe those Departments would be able to cut back a little more.