‘Green’ school rules need to be suspended

As legislators look for ways to save money there is one approach that would save millions each year: suspend Washington’s failed “green” school mandates. Suspending this requirement saves money today and removes a burden that has failed to produce promised savings.

Giving local districts the freedom to build energy efficient schools that suit their district, saves money by eliminating trendy, but impractical, “green” elements from school construction costs.

When the “green” schools law was passed four years ago, supporters argued the standards would pay for themselves, reducing energy use by up to 50 percent. Supporters claimed one school in Tacoma was already saving more than 30 percent in energy use. The data showed something different. Giaudrone Middle School, built with the “green” elements, uses about 30 percent more energy than a middle school built in the same district in the same year, but without those “green” elements.

The Department of Ecology’s green building coordinator claimed in an editorial printed in the Olympian that “A school in Spokane built in compliance with the protocol estimates its annual energy savings at about $40,000 a year.” This number doesn’t even pass the smell test. Elementary schools in Spokane use only about $42,000 a year in energy, so saving $40,000 would be too good to be true. It is.

None of the three green elementary schools has ever been as efficient as Spokane’s Browne elementary, built in 2002 without the “green” elements. Browne uses 13 percent less energy per square foot than the best green school.

In other cases, advocates of green buildings cite projected, not actual, savings. Sometimes they compare green buildings to the minimum building codes, not typical buildings.

Many now admit these failures. The Superintendent of Public Instruction’s office released a report in December admitting their data could not show energy savings. A study last year of the Energy Star program by the EPA Investigator General found that claims of energy savings using that system were unreliable.

Some argue that green schools are used more during the evening because people like the new buildings, leading to higher energy use. The data on building use is not kept consistently, so this hypothesis is not based on data. The building managers themselves reject this, saying the failure to save energy is not caused by increased building use, which affects energy use only slightly. Additionally, the math simply doesn’t work. The buildings would have been used virtually day and night to explain their failure to achieve projected energy savings.

Supporters also claim green buildings “do not contribute to the destruction of old-growth forests.” In fact, old growth isn’t used for construction anyway because it is so expensive. I would be willing to make a sizable wager that not a single building, green or not, in the last 10 years has been built using old growth timber.

Adding insult to injury, buildings cost more to build than was promised. Advocates told the Legislature that green buildings would cost an additional 2 percent. Interviews with facilities directors indicate the real number is 6 percent, which is not trivial. Each year, the state and school districts spend about $450 million on school construction. A 6 percent increase is about $27 million.

When the law was passed, the state promised to help pay those added costs. State lawmakers, however, left the school districts to cover the cost of the unfunded mandate.

School districts are already cutting energy costs and our research found that districts consistently improved energy efficiency long before Olympia added these mandates. Local facilities directors know their buildings well. Trusting them with more control is the best way to improve energy efficiency in a responsible and cost-conscious way.

Improving the efficiency of schools makes sense, but the best ideas come from local districts, not Olympia. Removing the cookie-cutter approach mandated four years ago would free districts to make responsible improvements without spending education money on approaches that do little to improve energy efficiency.

Suspending these mandates means saving $27 million for other priorities like educating children or doubling the budget for removing habitat-destroying blockages on salmon streams. Suspending these mandates is good for school kids and for the environment.