Schools

Innovative Environmental Program Saved District $118,000 in Energy Bills

Schools for Energy Efficiency focuses on changing the behavior of students and staff in the district.

Simple things, like turning off the lights when you leave a room, can add up to big savings.

Just ask School District 199 officials. Since 2008, the district has saved roughly $118,000 on its energy bills by making mechanical improvements and implementing a district-wide, environmentally friendly program called Schools for Energy Efficiency, or SEE.

The program, created by White Bear Lake businessman Joe Halberg, focuses on making behavioral changes among students and staff within the school district, explained SEE program consultant Tom Mathieu.

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“There’s something for everybody to like about the SEE program, if you’re a financial person, it helps the district save money,” Mathieu said. “Environmentally, it’s a great thing, because anything you can do to reduce your carbon footprint in my opinion is a really good thing.”

The program encourages students and staff to shut off unused lights, electronics and appliances, and also empowers groups of students, called “SEE Squads,” who patrol the hallways and classrooms looking for examples of wasted electricity. At the same time, SEE consultants work closely with district officials to identify possible, energy-saving facility improvements. SEE advisors also collected 14 months of past energy bills from the district to establish a baseline for the district’s energy consumption, Mathieu said.

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Over the three years the program has been in place in Inver Grove Heights, the district has replaced an out-dated burner in Simley High School and exchanged energy-intensive metal-halide lights with fluorescent bulbs across the district, said David Slomkowski, the health and safety coordinator for the district. The district also installed motion sensors that shut down lights when certain rooms aren’t in use, Slomkowski said.

From July 2008 to Dec. 2010, the district has paid $68,500 to implement the SEE program. In that same span, the district saved $118,000, Slomkowski said. SEE advisors also discovered a mistake in the district’s utility bills that saved the schools an additional $20,000, Slomkowski said.

Through 2010, the district’s total energy consumption has dropped by 13 percent, although some individual facilities have exceeded that number. Hilltop Elementary School, for example, cut its energy consumption by 26 percent in 2010. The district is in the third year of the five-year program.

Those reductions qualified the district for two Energy Star awards, Slomkowski said at a recent Inver Grove Heights School Board meeting.

“You owe it to the taxpayers to try and run your buildings as cheaply as possible,” said Slomkowski, who coordinates the SEE program in Inver Grove Heights schools. “Here’s a way to lower costs without really doing anything except training people and getting people to think differently.”


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