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Testimony submitted to the Energy Master Plan Committee
Regarding the Energy Master Plan for New Jersey
October 26, 2006
The October 13, 2006 draft of the Energy
Master Plan for New Jersey contains “Goal 1: To Provide New Jersey
with Secure, Safe, and Reasonably Priced Energy Supplies and Services.”
I write to support and strengthen the section on “Public Awareness and
Education” under Goal 1, most particularly with regard to Objective
16, “By 2020, 100% of public schools will implement an energy efficiency,
conservation and renewable energy curriculum as part of their mandatory
course work.” My comments also relate to Objective 17’s reference to
vocational schools.
By way of brief background, Global Learning is a non-profit educational
organization that has been providing educational services and programs to
K-12 schools in New Jersey, and elsewhere, since 1974. Our work has focused
primarily on energy education and conservation since the end of 2002, when
we received the first of several grants from the New Jersey Board of Public
Utilities. With funding from the Clean Energy Program in 2004, we were able
to bring to the state a pilot program of the Green Schools Program, a
national project initiated by the Alliance to Save Energy. Our initial pilot
school district was Brick Township Schools where we began Green
Schools in six of their fourteen schools in the 2004-05 school year. We
expanded the pilot a second year in 2005-06 by incorporating all fourteen
schools, as well as initiating Green Schools in 17 schools of the Toms
River Regional School District.
Both the educational and the energy saving results from these two school
districts have been impressive. Students from elementary through high school
have demonstrated increased awareness of energy concepts and issues,
including the importance of conserving energy at school and at home. They
have also demonstrated increased understanding of the various ways that
energy generation and use impact the environment. In addition, students also
reported an increase in the frequency of their own energy-saving behaviors,
such as turning off unused lights and electronic devices.
Based on comparisons with established energy baselines for each
participating school, the energy and cost savings have been significant.
In 2004-05, the initial six Brick Green Schools saved 152,815 KWHs of
electricity, 1,876 therms of natural gas, for a financial savings to the
district of $20,101. The planet also benefited from a reduction in 108 tons
of CO2. In 2005-06, the combined savings of the Brick Green Schools and the
Toms River Green Schools amounted to more than 2.3 million KWHs, 50,000
therms, $300,000, and 1,700 tons of CO2. To provide a contextual basis
for viewing these savings, the percentages that schools saved in electrical
usage ranged in Brick schools from 4.6% to 36.2% and in Toms River schools
from 1.4% to 12.1%.
These positive results were achieved by doing more than requiring the
inclusion of energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy curriculum
in course work. The Green Schools Program does provide educational resources
for teachers to utilize. But we also provide a school wide framework and an
organizational structure that transcend the curriculum and incorporate the
school building as a learning tool, along with school operations. Green
Schools organizes teams in each building that consist of an administrator, a
custodian and several teachers. These adult teams each decide how best to
involve their students in energy saving activities. The educational
activities are infused into both the curriculum and extracurricular
activities, such as student clubs, student energy patrols, spring concerts
etc. Green Schools Teams adapt the resources to meet their own needs and
circumstances, a freedom that elicits wonderful creativity and enthusiasm
across the board.
In addition, we as program organizers help the districts establish energy
baselines for each of their schools. In most cases this baseline is a two
year average of previous usage, adjusted for weather. In some cases we
utilize a single year as a baseline, also adjusted for weather, due to
significant additions to individual school buildings. Then during the
program year we monitor energy usage on a building by building basis. A
portion of the financial savings is returned to the individual Green Schools
Teams for them to decide how best to improve their educational efforts.
In addition to providing a significant incentive to the schools to save
energy, this monitoring process addresses a major obstacle to getting
schools to conserve energy. In most schools, no one has a clue how much
energy their building uses or abuses. They therefore have no clue how
responsible their usage is or how their school compares with any other
schools, whether in the district or across the state. Thus there is
generally little to no attention paid to practical measures that can save a
significant percentage in energy usage.
For these reasons, Global Learning recommends the following changes to
the proposed Energy Master Plan for New Jersey:
- Require public school districts to report to a public agency, e.g.,
the New Jersey Department of Education or the New Jersey Board of Public
Utilities, the annual energy usage of each school’s major electric and gas
accounts.
- Require the public agency to report these figures annually,
standardized by square footage, for public review and statewide
comparisons.
- Include within the proposal for a required energy efficiency,
conservation and renewable energy curriculum an explicit correlation with
the individual school’s ongoing energy usage.
Such changes would help both school staff and students make valuable
connections between academic work and practical applications to their school
building’s operations. In essence schools would become more clearly part of
the solution to our global energy challenges.
Respectfully submitted,
Jeffrey L. Brown
Executive Director
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