Building on an energy efficient goal
When students leave for the summer, school buildings don’t go dark—they remain fully operational; however, the district ensures that no watt is wasted. With the help of the Energy and Sustainability Department, energy consumption is turned into cost-saving strategies with minimal impact to the environment.
Sustainability Manager Bryant Shaw said the guiding principle is to “make the most of what we have and use even less.” While the district consumes a vast amount of energy, he said, it is renewable energy, which significantly reduces carbon emissions.
“Our carbon contribution to the atmosphere is far less than it ever was before; and although the district is larger, our impact on the environment is smaller,” Shaw said.
This year, the district received a check for $578,000 through NRG Energy Inc.’s Responsive Economic Dispatch program, which monetized energy consumption over the course of 2024. The district, according to Shaw, reinvests the money in more efficient mechanical systems for HVAC.
The Energy and Sustainability Department plays a crucial role in the 2020 Bond Program by, for example, controlling utility shutoffs any time there is a renovation or repair. Its involvement, however, goes beyond routine tasks. Shaw said his department is assisting in planning for future bond programs.
“Most of our consistent involvement with the 2020 Bond Program has been related to sustainability and making sure there’s a set of standards called the Collaborative for High Performing Schools, or CHPS,” Shaw said. “These are more or less a checklist that we see implemented and then follow-up on for the implementation.”
Shaw noted that the department’s team rarely goes a day without a utility shutdown request from Construction Services. To date, he has completed over 200 of them related to the 2020 bond.
“It could be some plumbing repairs or fixtures changes at a school, or it could be that the school is being demolished entirely and replaced with a new facility. Then it’s our responsibility to manage that shutdown,” Shaw said. “If the school is being demolished entirely, then we ensure that the natural gas, water, and electricity are shut down. Then we stand by until the new structure is completed to restore utilities.”
Another way the department contributes to the district’s savings is through the recycling of furniture. When schools replace their furniture using bond funds, Energy and Sustainability is tasked with either recycling or disposing of the old furniture.
“It’s usually our responsibility to find a way of making use of that old furniture in some way. Sometimes it is reused within the district and redistributed to other facilities, especially administrative facilities,” Shaw said.
Just recently, Energy and Sustainability assisted Construction Services in replacing all water fountains with lead-free parts and filters.
The 2020 Bond Program and Energy and Sustainability have a collaborative goal of either building or remodeling one elementary, one middle, and one high school to achieve net-zero standards. This means the schools will produce as much energy as they consume.
“In the next five years, we’re looking at establishing some solar projects where we would have net-zero locations, producing more energy that we then use,” Shaw said.
Shaw said his department is also exploring the efficiency of HVAC equipment and its application to the new builds and renovations in the district under the 2020 Bond Program. This eliminates the need to ask schools to conserve energy, as the new designs are already energy efficient.
“There was a time when we needed to turn the lights off, shut all the windows when the air conditioning was on, leave doors open for the most part, but that’s all being taken care of,” Shaw said. “Energy efficiency is being built into the design of schools where we don’t have to account for the human factor.”
