Utah's four-day workweek for state employees isn't saving the state as much as money as Gov. Jon Huntsman's staff thought it would when Utah became the first state in the country to adopt the compressed schedule to try to reduce energy consumption.

In August, Utah began the one-year pilot program and shut down most of its services on Fridays in an effort to save $3 million on utilities and cut energy consumption in state buildings by 20 percent.

"At this point, I think the $3 million should be considered a stretch," Kim Hood, executive director of the Department of Administrative Services, told lawmakers Wednesday. "I think we need the full year of a pilot program to determine what the savings are going to be."

However, employees occasionally coming into work on Fridays, unpredictable temperatures and energy prices, and individual electricity use habits of state workers in buildings that may need to be made more energy efficient has made reaching that goal unlikely this year, lawmakers were told.

"It's one we feel like we can reach. I don't know that we can reach it in the first year," Hood said. "This is a target and in order to reach that target, it's not just ... enough to close down our buildings to business on Friday. We have to work hard at reducing our energy use."

Exact figures on cost savings were not available Wednesday.

Huntsman had previously set a goal of increasing energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020 when he made the switch to a four-day week.

The move was made by the governor with little-to-no input from state workers, residents or lawmakers and was one of the boldest initiatives he took during his first four years in office. Huntsman is increasingly trying to frame himself as part of a new breed of Republicans that consider the environment a top issue, even in a state where many of his GOP colleagues believe global warming is a hoax.

Instead of having employees working eight hours a day, five days a week, Huntsman ordered about 17,000 of the state's 24,000 executive branch employees to begin working four days a week, 10 hours a day.

Initially, Huntsman's staff set a target of closing 1,000 of the state's 6,000 buildings on Fridays. College campuses, court houses, liquor stores, veterans hospitals and emergency services remain open on Fridays.

However, the state has only been able to close 900 buildings and some government offices such as the Utah National Guard had been closing on Fridays before the switch was made this summer. Of those 900 buildings, the state is leasing about 500 of them, reducing the ability to save on energy costs, said John Harrington, state buildings energy manager.

Harrington said state officials are been able to identify about 100 buildings where the opportunity for cost savings is significant. However, initial reviews show that about half of those buildings are reducing energy consumption by less than 10 percent, he said.

"It's a challenge. It's a work in progress," he said.