Assessing the Effects of TC’s Green Thumb

In the 2002-2003 school year, when Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) began seriously considering the idea of building a new campus for T.C. Williams High School, ACPS envisioned a building that was one of the greenest and most energy efficient buildings possible. By the time the new building opened at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, it had already received a Green Innovation Award in the category of Best Institutional Project at the Virginia Sustainable Building Network’s 2007 meeting. Two and a half years later, T.C. has lived up to its expectations.
ACPS has employed an online energy monitoring software (http://tcwilliams.alexandria.greentouchscreen.com) that allows the public to see the resource consumption of the new T.C. compared with that of a typical building (modeled after the old T.C.). According to this program, T.C. used 14,745 kilowatts per hour (kWh) of electricity on Friday, January 15, 2010 while a typical building would have used 24,640 kWh, saving a total of 1,781,100 kWh per year. On the same date, T.C. used 500 British thermal units (btu) of natural gas whereas a typical building would have used 770 btu, saving a total of 48,600 btu per year. Likewise, T.C. used 650 gallons per minute (gpm) of water while a typical building would have used 670 gpm, saving 3,600 gpm per year.
One might wonder, “Why does T.C. use so much less energy than a typical building?” The answer lies in a number of green features employed in the design of the building. One such feature is a 450,000 gallon cistern buried under the outdoor dining area. This feature collects rain water and utilizes it for toilet flushing, irrigation, air-conditioning, and other non-potable uses. It’s projected that this feature will save over five million gallons of potable water per year. Another feature is the waterless urinals in the men’s restrooms. The building was also designed to let in as much natural light as possible, thus reducing the cost of lighting. Another green element is an advanced heating and air conditioning system that combines the heat from the exhaust air with fresh (often cold) air from outside. This means that less energy is required to heat up the fresh air, thus saving money and energy.
In their never-ending quest for conservation, ACPS recently made a deal with the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Energy Star Partner of the Year, Energy Education, that is estimated to save them $700,000 during the first year of implementation and $11 million worth of net total savings over the next 10 years. ACPS Director of Facilities, Mark Krause, said that Energy Education has two purposes. “One is to survey all the buildings, including T.C., and determine where we can save more energy,” he said. “And the second one is to set up an education program for staff and students, so that not only, for example, they’re going to go in the buildings and look for things that are operating on nights and weekends that shouldn’t be operating, [such as] computers that shouldn’t be left on, vending machines that still have the lights still on, any exhaust fans in the toilet rooms that don’t have to be operating when the building’s empty, that type of thing.” Energy Education will essentially be the little angel on ACPS’ shoulder that reminds them if they’ve left something on or forgot to turn something off.
One might ask why ACPS is doing so many energy conservation programs. Maybe it’s because they feel that if their students won’t excel in school, at least their schools will excel in energy conservation? Who knows…