It's time to get Green in Morrisville

With a little forward thinking, and the will to actually make a positive difference, this could be done for our district.

Cash-Strapped School Districts Look to Solar for Low Cost Energy
from cleantechnica.com
Written by Tina Casey
Published on July 4th, 2010

As school districts across the country struggle with budget cuts, the solar energy industry is offering a solution in the form of financing for low cost solar energy installations. It’s a perfect match: many schools have large expanses of flat, unshaded roofs and the buildings are in use mainly during daylight hours, alleviating the need to provide for storage. Federal stimulus grants for solar installations are also playing a role in driving the growing trend toward solar installations at schools, as are efforts by utility companies to add more renewable energy to their portfolios through distributed solar installations.


The installations provide a double benefit for schools because they cut energy costs while also providing educators with a hands on, close-to-home opportunity to teach students about solar energy. As for the politics of it all, what’s so wrong with saving money for taxpayers while expanding the science curriculum?

Sol Ventus Partners LLC is one of a number of companies that offer “turnkey” solar installations that provide school districts with access to solar energy in the form of Power Purchase Agreements. There are no out-of-pocket costs. The company constructs, operates, and maintains the system over an agreed-upon number of years. In one recent project, a new agreement between Sol Ventus and a school district in Ohio will result in a locked in savings of 15-18% over a 20-year period. The solar array also includes a real-time online display that can be accessed by the school district and the community, and Sol Ventus has used it as the basis for a proprietary curriculum that incorporates mathematics, economics and science.

The Disappearing Politics of Solar Energy

As recently as just last year, business journalists (at least one, anyways), were ascribing the “big motivation behind installing solar power” to the “famous liberal bias of schools…” If that was true then, the bottom line is on top of the totem pole now. Just one recent example is the town of Madison, Connecticut, which expects that a new school solar array will save about $10,000 a year. That’s a pretty decent payback, considering that the installation will cost the town $132,000. The total cost is $299,000 with the balance coming from a state grant.

Solar Energy and Taxpayer Subsidies

The state grant certainly played a key role in the Madison installation, but subsidizing energy through grants, tax breaks and other incentives is nothing new. As outlined in detail by today’s New York Times, oil is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the U.S. Considering the big bucks behind the current energy policy, it’s no mystery why the U.S. remains powered by fossil fuels even as the risks of fossil fuel harvesting rise and communities continue to be devastated by the impacts of oil spills, coal mining, and natural gas drilling. Until we get a new national energy policy that transfers those subsidies into low-risk, alternative energy, it looks like we’re stuck with the status quo. With mid-term elections coming up, now would be the perfect time to let your representatives in Congress know what’s on your mind.

Image: Solar panels on school by mjmonty on flickr.com.

PhillyBurbs.com: Schools, towns doing their part going green

PhillyBurbs.com: Schools, towns doing their part going green

ATTN: Morrisville School Board...It's time you enact some "green initiatives", or at least share with the public anything you have done to be more "green"!! 40 yr old lightbulb fixtures and rusty a/c units are not very green, that alone is costing taxpayers at least "up to 25k" per year.

By: RICH PIETRAS
Bucks County Courier Times
Turn off your lights. Recycle your plastic.

These are baby steps on the road to Greenville that become huge hurdles when you're a municipality or a school district, with thousands of lights to monitor and tons of trash and recyclables building up.

But a positive trend is picking up steam + as well as recyclables, area officials say.

Faced with a sagging economy and a change in energy bills, administrators have found that saving the planet can also save serious cash.

In Montgomery County, the Hatboro-Horsham School District has allowed its students to help it get greener.

By using recycling bins provided by Allied Waste last year, students and faculty can discard all their recyclables together. With Allied Waste separating items like newspapers, junk mail, cardboard, aluminum cans, brown paper bags, glass plastic and paper, officials say the district is saving money while doing the right thing.

Allied Waste says the district generates about 1,000 tons of trash per year, which costs about $70 per ton to haul away. However, processing recyclable materials costs $45 per ton. Do the math, and the district is saving about $25,000 per year under the new program.

Many communities also have environmental advisory councils to help them pave the way to Greenville. An EAC is typically comprised of three to seven residents appointed by the municipal governing body. EACs advise planning commissions, park and recreation boards and elected officials on conservation, management, promotion and use of natural resources.

Lower Makefield and Warminster have relied on their EACs to become local leaders in the movement to lower the municipality's carbon footprint as they look to also make money.

Makefield Elementary - the Pennsbury School District's oldest operating school - has become a model for green building as it undergoes $12.7 million in green improvements. The modifications will earn the school a silver LEED rating, the second of four certification levels.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a designation developed by the U.S. Green Building Council that encourages companies, governments and schools to adopt sustainable green building and development practices.

In addition to a green roof that will use plantings to absorb rainwater to help reduce runoff, the school will have water-saving bathroom fixtures, energy-efficient kitchen appliances, updated mechanical systems and energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. A new 20-kilowatt photovoltaic solar panels system will also use the sun's energy to help lower the school's electricity bill.

Lower Makefield Environmental Advisory Council member Lisa Grayson Zygmunt was involved in the school's projects and she said the township has been just as aggressive about municipal buildings.

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By doing energy audits on several township buildings, Lower Makefield has set up a program where the town will use the energy savings to pay for green upgrades for the buildings, which will help save money for years.

Jim Bray, also a Lower Makefield EAC member, credited EAC Chairman Rick Ewing for helping the township reach the "first step" (municipal energy efficiency) in a three-step process, with commercial and residential entities the other two steps.

Bray said as far as commercial properties go, the township has joined others with incentive-based building codes that lower fees and project time limits for companies that utilize green building practices. Zygmunt said the township also stresses "low impact development" to builders.

Plus, Lower Makefield has been named a "Cool City" by the Sierra Club after it became the fist township in the region to sign on to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The initiative, launched by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, is a commitment to reduce emissions below 1990 levels by 2012.

Residences are the biggest remaining areas of concern for Lower Makefield, Zygmunt said, so the EAC's next step will be to help the township's 35,000 residents work on ways to make homes more energy efficient.

"People are surprised that the residential sector is such a contributor to carbon output; they tend to think about more about vehicles," Zygmunt said. "But it is buildings that produce way more emissions."

In Warminster , Gail Johnson - the ultra-environmentally conscious chairman of the board of supervisors - has been working with EAC member Larry Menkes on a "guaranteed energy savings contract" made possible through the Guaranteed Energy Act.

The act helps public institutions complete energy conservation projects by using money saved on energy costs. Similar to what Makefield did, this program "guarantees" that if a project doesn't reach the amount of savings projected by the energy service company within 15 years, that company - commonly called an ESCO - pays the difference.

"This is a matter of fiscal responsibility," Menkes said. "I, quite honestly, try to stay away from 'tree-hugger' argument. Very frankly, I got involved not only because of the environment, but because I knew there were ways to save a lot of money for myself and other taxpayers."

Both Bray and Menkes have also reached out to other communities in Southeastern Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

"This is a regional issue," Bray said. "There are 2,700 communities in the state, so it is crucial to get others onboard."

August 30, 2010 02:10 AM