When speaking to school officials about going green, energy consumption is foremost on their minds because it is both a drain on resources and a drain on the environment. The state legislature has mandated that districts set a target of reducing energy consumption by 5 percent annually. That means installing energy– efficient lighting and air conditioning, and cutting kilowatt hours.
Temple and Belton school districts have set their sights on Encore Energy’s offer to pay schools for reducing power consumption.
Encore Energy owns and operates power plants, and operates energy transition and distribution systems.
The question Max Cleaver, executive director of facilities planning and operations for the Temple school district, gets about this program is, “Why does the power company want us to save money? Aren’t they in the business of selling electricity?”
“Power companies are mandated to help customers reduce energy use so they don’t have to create capacity,” Cleaver said. “It make more economic sense to use less energy, therefore you don’t have to build as big or as many electrical plants.”
Eric Banfield, business manager for the Belton school district, is hoping for big savings from the program.
Temple also is looking at a way to put the risk of installing energy–efficient devices on the installer, instead of the district.
Cleaver has been working out a deal with energy company Siemens for it to install power–saving light fixtures and A/C units. What the district saves on power pays off the debt. The installer takes the risk. The district is left with energy–efficient fixtures and lower bills.
The Belton district also is putting money up front to save power.
“At Tarver Elementary we use windows to improve lighting in the classroom so you don’t need as much lighting,” Banfield said. “Then, of course, lights in the classrooms are on motion sensors so they go off automatically when there is no movement in the room.”
The biggest power drain is the air conditioning, which is carefully monitored across the district, he said.
“The A/C is on a management system,” Banfield said. “Each unit is tied back to a computer in the energy manager’s office and he sets the schedule for when those units go on and off. We schedule them to start up before people get there and turn off when they leave.”
Banfield said the goal is to get everyone thinking how to save energy.
“We’re trying to build energy efficiency into everybody’s habits.”
Everyday essentials such as paper also are being conserved as much as possible.
Banfield said to reduce paper waste at the staff level, district copy machines have a function to copy a page into a digital format and download it to a computer instantly. Passing out sheets of paper can be replaced with a system–wide e–mail.
In Temple there are efforts to add LCD projectors to classrooms to minimize handouts for homework and get students used to doing their work exclusively on the computer.
The districts also are working to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions on their buses by replacing them as often as possible. Banfield said Belton has almost phased out the unleaded gas–consuming bus fleet in favor of diesel, which is more efficient. They also are making an effort to change out the buses sooner because older engines release more pollution and consume more fuel.
nkchandler@temple-telegram.com
