The Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Program is a voluntary effort to help businesses and other organizations save money and reduce pollution by upgrading their lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation to more energy efficient systems. In the last few years, the district has expanded their participation to the new Energy Star Label for Buildings program.

The Energy Star Label for Buildings program reviews and rates buildings in terms of their energy performance and their ability to maintain industry standards in the indoor environment. The EPA has set up a standard for benchmarking each building that applies for the Energy Star Label. Benchmarking is process by which the building is compared to other average buildings of similar use. In our case, each district site was submitted for review and then was compared to other K-12 school buildings across the country. The EPA takes a number of factors into account when looking at each building including: location, square footage, number of occupants, weekly hours of operation, electricity consumption, and past billing of this consumption. The buildings are then given a “score” on a scale from 0-100. Schools that receive a score of 75 or higher are eligible to receive the Energy Star Label for Buildings. This score means the schools are in the top twenty-five percent nationwide for energy performance and indoor environment.

All schools that reach a score of 75 or higher will receive a plaque that denotes their Energy Star status. They will also be listed on the Registry of Energy Star Buildings on the EPA Web site. In addition, this program lets the Energy/Utility Management Section know what schools are on track for energy efficiency, and what schools could use a bit more help to make them energy efficient as well.

As of April 2003, 117 district sites have been named Energy Star Schools. We congratulate these sites for their efforts to become energy efficient. We are proud of the great success and are committed to finding additional ways to make all district sites reach the standard set up by the EPA’s Energy Star Labels for Buildings program.
Click Here to view the list of Energy Star Schools.
Energy Star Website: www.energystar.gov