Scoring Our Schools: Program Implementation Lessons-Learned From Benchmarking Over 1,775 Schools for Seven Utilities

Panel: Commercial Buildings: Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation

Authors:
Jim Stimmel, CLEAResult Consulting, Inc.
Jessica Gohs, CLEAResult Consulting, Inc.

Abstract

Over the last two years, CLEAResult Consulting has benchmarked the energy performance of over 1,775 schools in seven electric utility service territories. The benchmarked schools include all school districts in three of the utility service territories and a small percentage of the districts in the other four. This paper presents the findings and lessons-learned from the benchmarking analysis and is focused on impacts of program design, effectiveness, implementation, and results rather than technical methodology.

Our benchmarking assesses performance by building and by total school district, utilizing 12-month meter data, building information, the U.S. EPA Portfolio Manager, and our own database and analytics. We also developed methods to use the results to motivate and empower school administrators to reduce energy use. Some conclusions confirm expectations and others are surprising. The data set is large enough to be meaningful and includes school districts large and small (1 to 290 campuses), rural and urban, and in significantly varied political/economic locales. In narrative and graphical form, this paper discusses results and conclusions that may be useful to program managers in other jurisdictions, for example:

There is very wide disparity of energy performance in K-12 schools - the highest energyconsumingschools may use up to seven times more energy per square foot than the lowest energy consuming schools - even within the same climate zone. Excluding themost extreme buildings, the range is about three-fold.
On average, newer schools use about the same amount of energy per square foot as older schools. Although the building and equipment efficiency may be better, additional energy loads (e.g., more outside air or high energy-consuming spaces like theaters) often more than replace the efficiency gains.
There is a measurable difference in energy use in areas with high humidity, even where degree-days are similar.
There is some correlation of better building energy usage and the relative wealth (available budgets) of school districts.
The U.S. EPA Portfolio Manager Score aligns with energy consumption per square foot in most, but not all cases.
Although there is general uniformity in building space utilization, occupant density can vary widely, translating to a correspondingly wide range in energy cost per student.
Elementary and middle schools (grades K-8) both use a similar amount of energy per square foot. High schools (grades 9-12) use more, but not as much as energy managers tend to expect (about 8% more on average).
Most school administrators and energy managers do not have a clear understanding of how the performance of their buildings compares to others; therefore, benchmarking is a very effective tool to help motivate administrators, break down departmental silos, improve decision-making, and accelerate project funding.