New label to help schools learn lessons of efficiency

Building Operating Management, Sep 2000 by Rospond, Kathryn M

ENERGY STAR Building Label for schools combines benchmarking with recognition for top performance to help decision-makers understand energy performance - and opportunities

One year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched its EHeRCY STAR Building Label for office buildings, EPA has expanded the criteria to include the nation's thousands of primary and secondary schools. By extending the ENERGY STaR Label to schools, EPA is offering school facility executives the first online benchmarking tool by which they can compare the operating efficiency of their faclities to others across the country.

"We've always encouraged school facility executives to improve efficiency, but we've never provided a way to measure their efforts," says Jean Lupinacci, director of the ENERGY SR Buildings program. "This addresses a lot of the questions that keep getting asked of us: When am I done? Have I done a good job?"

The expansion of benchmarking and labeling to schools was a natural fit, according to Doug Gatlin, manager of public partnerships with ENERGY Srna and EPA. Schools comprise 5 billion square feet of space across the country - much of it deteriorating. They also account for a tremendous amount of wasted energy Schools spend $6 billion annually on energy more than the amount spent on computers and textbooks combined - and nearly one-third of the energy consumed is wasted. By encouraging facility executives to improve schools' efficiencies through lighting and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) upgrades, the money saved can be redirected toward major capital improvements.

"Nationwide, we estimate $1.5 billion in annual savings can be achieved through energy performance improvements," Ga

As big as the energy cost saving opportunities are, they are essentially invisible. There's no easy way to distinguish an energy-efficient building from its less efficient peers. The ENERGY STAR Label seeks to change that. "Every time I go into a building and see an ENERGY STaR Label, I'm impressed because I know what they went through to get that," says Patti Leopard, monitoring and verification senior analyst for Onsite Energy Corp. Onsite is the standard performance contractor for Kansas City (Kansas) Public Schools, one of the nine school districts with buildings that make up the inaugural class of school Label recipients. "I've been in this business for more than 15 years, and anything that can be done to encourage energy conservation helps everyone across the board."

In addition to Kansas City, the other school districts with buildings that received the Label are: Academy School District 20 (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Boulder Valley Public Schools (Boulder, Colo.), Columbia Public Schools (Missouri), Marion County Schools (West Virginia), McAllen Independent School District (Texas), Milwaukee Public Schools (Wisconsin), New Haven Public Schools (Connecticut) and San Diego Unified School District (California).

Simple Grading System

While time-consuming, the benchmarking process is relatively simple, representatives from most of the school districts or their energy-conservation contractors agreed. After logging on to the EPA site, accessing the benchmarking tool and creating an account, it's a matter of inputting data: gross square footage for each site, 12 months of energy-consumption data for each fuel type, number of students and weekly hours of occupancy. Some software glitches were encountered but, with the help of Honor Roll: Schools Earn Top Marks For Energy EPAs customer support team, most problems were worked through quickly

For the most part, the process is the same as that for office buildings. However, schools also must input data for special areas, such as a cafeteria or a swimming pool. Weather data is factored into the equation by entering the school's zip code, which creates a link to a real-time weather file. And once data entry is complete, the benchmarking tool adjusts for weather, climate, building size and other significant variables affecting total energy use. The result is an automatic score comparing the energy performance of one school to others nationwide. Schools earning a 75 or higher qualify for the Label. Benchmark scores are not based on energy simulation modeling; rather, they are based on a percentile ranking of real energy performance scores from a sample of schools nationwide. That means schools with a score of 75 are in the 75th percentile. In addition, schools must meet ASHRAE-recommended standards for thermal comfort and indoor air quality, as well as lighting levels recommended by the Illuminating Engineering Society.

EPA could have simply reported the schools' measured energy intensity in kBTU/sf but decided that providing a score was a better approach. "By putting it on a scale of zero to 100, rather than something technical like BTUs, we're making the ranking easier to understand for high-level managers and decision-makers," Lupinacci says. "Besides, the zero to 100 scoring system is a familiar grading system for schools."