Rescuing School Budgets with Renewable Energy

But Richardsville Elementary would not only cap­ture Hendrick’s imagination—it would come to inspire his class­mates and school dis­tricts around the world. When Richardsville opened its doors in fall 2010, it was the first “net zero” school in the nation, mean­ing that the school pro­duces more energy on-site than it uses in a year.

Solar tubes pip­ing sun­light directly into class­rooms elim­i­nate much of the school’s demand for elec­tric light, while a com­bi­na­tion of geot­her­mal and solar power cut down on the rest of the energy bill. Concrete floors treated with a soy-based stain don’t need buff­ing. The kitchen, which in most schools con­tributes to 20 per­cent of the energy bill, houses a combi-oven that cooks health­ier meals and elim­i­nates fry­ing. This means an exhaust fan doesn’t pipe the school’s temperature-controlled air to the out­doors all day long. Meanwhile, “green screens” in the front hall track the school’s energy usage so kids can see the impact of turn­ing off a light in real time.

These and other inno­va­tions make Richardsville bet­ter than net zero. It actu­ally earns about $2,000 a month sell­ing excess energy to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

But build­ing a green school isn’t enough, accord­ing to archi­tect Philip C. Gayhart, prin­ci­pal in the archi­tec­ture firm Sherman Carter Barnhart, which built Richardsville and has helped the Warren County School District achieve Energy Star rat­ings for 17 of its 24 schools.

Three fac­tors are essen­tial to mak­ing a green school work: First, you need the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the com­mu­nity and the local power com­pany; sec­ond, you can’t for­get that a school is a dynamic learn­ing envi­ron­ment; and third, you need to speak the lan­guage of money.

Green by necessity

Since the eco­nomic reces­sion began in 2008, school dis­tricts have suf­fered. Local tax bases were shaken as prop­erty val­ues plum­meted, and states have cut back on fund­ing to dis­tricts, which were pushed to cut funds wher­ever they were able. Addressing energy use made a lot of finan­cial sense.

Few states have been harder hit than Arizona, where the 21.8 per­cent decrease in per-pupil spend­ing was the high­est in the nation.

Sue Pierce, direc­tor of facil­ity plan­ning and energy with the Washington Elementary School District in Phoenix, watched as teacher posi­tions were cut, fur­lough days were sched­uled, and $6 mil­lion in annual facil­i­ties fund­ing disappeared.

“We saw that energy was really an area where we could per­haps save money by sim­ply chang­ing behav­ior,” Pierce said. “I approached the super­in­ten­dent and asked per­mis­sion to develop a program.”

The district’s new energy pol­icy aimed to cut energy con­sump­tion district-wide by 10 per­cent in the first year and 40 per­cent over the next five years. As part of the pro­gram, Pierce began to dis­trib­ute monthly reports on energy usage, which included every school in the district.

Some schools took to the pro­gram more quickly than others.

“Just by chang­ing behav­iors, they were show­ing 10 and 15 per­cent reduc­tion the first or sec­ond month,” she said. The reports then fueled a com­pe­ti­tion between schools, and by the end of the first year, energy use had been cut 15 per­cent district-wide.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at YesMagazine.org.