Consulting-Specifying Engineer - March 2008 - (Page 26)

How green is your school? Though geared mostly toward school officials, MEP engineers should take note of the new “Advanced Energy Design Guide for K-12 School Buildings,” published in early 2008 by ASHRAE and other key developers. The 174-page tome outlines how HVAC, commissioning, water efficiency, and a host of other engineering-related factors can have a big impact on our nation’s youngest scholars. It links academic performance to students’ surroundings, and offers both statistics and case studies for background. For example, the report indicates that favorable light, sound, and temperature can help students learn better. In many cases, improving these attributes also can reduce energy use. Much of the background of this report is based on “Greening America’s Schools: Costs and Benefits” by Greg Kats, in which he provides 17 studies that demonstrate productivity increases of 2% to 25% from improved IAQ, acoustically designed indoor environments, and high-performance lighting systems. Advanced, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems create cleaner, healthier indoor environments that lower student and staff absentee rates and improve teacher retention. This translates into higher test scores and lower staff costs. Overall, HVAC really does play a role in education. Download the guide for free at http://ashrae.org /publications. Reference: Greening America’s Schools Costs and Benefits, A Capital E Report, October 2006. Report prepared by Gregory Kats. Sponsoring organizations include American Federation of Teachers, American Institute of Architects, American Lung Association, Federation of American Scientists, and the U.S. Green Building Council. www.cap-e.com. “We’ve found that these schools, with their good wall construction and daylighting, meet or exceed standards set forth today by organizations like ASHRAE or USGBC,” Clair said. In 2003, the City of Chicago decided that all newly built public buildings had to meet USGBC LEED 2.0 Certified standards. New Chicago Public Schools buildings were no exception. The CPS mirrored the older buildings’ design, and selected brick and concrete block construction for its new schools. And similar to old schools, such as Von Steuben High School, newer buildings have larger windows. Though the older buildings had leaky windows, the CPS now has replaced nearly 90% of them, increasing energy efficiency and overall performance. In 2007, green building was a significant portion of the construction industry. According to RSMeans Business Solutions, Kingston, Mass., owned by Reed Construction Data, about $21.6 billion was spent on new education construction projects. About one-fifth of that—279 projects totaling 25 million sq. ft—has RFPs or bidding documents that stated contractually that they were requiring these buildings to be submitted for USGBC LEED at some level. So CPS is not alone. It’s actually ahead of the curve. Many older buildings in Chicago met these green standards because the city already was forward-thinking in its building goals, but in 2003, the City of Chicago declared that all newly built public buildings had to meet USGBC LEED 2.0 Certified standards. CPS recently has investigated setting a target that its buildings use no more energy than what would fall on the site as renewable energy. So each new facility is built greener, with the whole site in mind, accounting for water efficiency (via water-efficient toilets), IAQ, integrated design (including the engineers, architects, and construction team from the beginning), and energy efficiency. CPS’ energy metric looks to ASHRAE 90.1-2007 and Energy Star building benchmarking as its energy design standard, and aims to either exceed the ASHRAE standard by 35% or achieve the Energy Star benchmark in the 80th percentile in all cases based on models during the design phase. Many of the CPS’s old buildings—those built more than 100 years ago—have more thermal mass than the newer structures, so they were already coming close to this number. But the school system is growing, and new buildings are springing up around the city. Welcome to Albany Park Multicultural Elementary School, the second school built under Chicago’s new “green schools” umbrella. Construction started in April 2005 and was completed in September 2006, just in time for the beginning (Continued on page 32) 26 Consulting-Specifying Engineer • MARCH 2008 http://ashrae.org/publications http://ashrae.org/publications http://www.cap-e.com

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Consulting-Specifying Engineer - March 2008 Contents Viewpoint Letters News M/E Roundtable Grade A HVAC When UPS and Gensets Have Issues Ignite Opportunities To Mentor Fire Protection Engineers Cooling People, Not Buildings Codes & Standards Case Study New Products Equipment Lifecycles Advertiser Index Green Space Pure Power Supplement Edison Institute Honors Recovery Efforts Canada Launches Clean Energy Software Climate Change Drives Increased Investment Critical Power for R&D Heating Calculations for Electrical Duct Bank Submetering for Energy Profiling New Products

Consulting-Specifying Engineer - March 2008

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