Saving Energy and Empowering Students
Environmental August 21st, 2009
By Felicia McDade, Johnson Controls
Who can forget the back-to-school days of late summer? Checking the list of supplies you’d need for the coming school year. Hoping you had graduated from paste to glue, Big Chief Tablet to spiral notebook, round-tipped to sharp scissors, crayons to colored pencils. Then making the big trip to the store to pick out a new backpack and fill it with all the stuff you’d need to start another nine months of learning.
When students arrived for their first day of school in Madison County, North Carolina this month, many found they weren’t the only ones who had been busy preparing for the new term. Nestled in the rural mountains of western North Carolina, Madison County schools serve some 2,600 students in four elementary schools, plus a middle school and a high school.
Back in May, when the last school year ended, Madison County School System officials took a bold step – one that will benefit students, teachers and staff far into the future. What they did was enter into an energy savings performance contract with Johnson Controls to reduce energy consumption, save money, shrink the District’s carbon footprint, create more comfortable learning and working environments, and better prepare students to grow into responsible citizens.
As the project gets underway, major improvements will be made to Madison High School, Madison Middle School and three elementary schools: Hot Springs, Brush Creek and Laurel. The central administrative office, bus garage and maintenance shop will also receive upgrades.
Improvements will include installing a Metasys® energy management system, enabling school facility managers to heat and cool buildings when they’re in use, and turn down those systems when the buildings are empty. We’ll also upgrade mechanical equipment and controls.
In addition to making classrooms and offices more comfortable, the improvements will also:
- Cut energy use by 36 percent
- Lower harmful emissions equivalent to removing 8,250 passenger vehicles from roadways
- Save more than $5.9 million over the course of the 15-year contract
The school district will accomplish all this without increasing its operating budget or raising taxes. Improvements will be more than paid for by the savings produced as a result of the energy efficient building enhancements.
Best of all, the benefits don’t stop with the facility upgrades. Johnson Controls will also provide Madison County schools with an energy education program – classroom curriculum that will help students and faculty learn what they can do at school and at home to save energy and reduce their impact on the environment.
At a time when so many school districts are grappling with aging facilities and declining revenues, this energy savings performance contract will help Madison County schools continue to make good on their promise to “embrace, equip and empower our students as lifetime learners.” More school districts should follow their lead.
Efficiency Now. It’s never been more important.
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