Program Details
Energy is key to power school operations, heating and cooling buildings, and fueling equipment. Energy efficiency is one of the strategies CPS pursues to mitigate emissions and save money. These strategies seek to use less energy to perform the same tasks, such as installing LED bulbs.
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Opportunity
Use less energy to perform operations
Essential to building operations, energy consumption is a major cause of climate change. Energy use and associated emissions has an impact on Chicago communities and represents an opportunity for us to mitigate our environmental impact.
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Strategy
Our plans to use energy more efficiently include:
- Publish program statistics from participating schools utility incentive programs on the sustainability program website
- Track therms (natural gas) and KWh (electricity) saved from energy efficiency incentive programs
- Pursue incentive programs with ComEd and Peoples Gas targeting building efficiency
- Identify other incentive programs centered on building efficiency
- Evaluate new construction projects for net zero energy potential
- Track LEED certifications
- Share project status and success amongst ongoing projects
- Identify other incentive programs centered on building efficiency
- Track impact of VCx on energy consumption
- Analyze impact of energy efficiency upgrades on building energy consumption
- Create database of retrocommissioning projects and track energy savings post commissioning
Schools can waste up to 25% of their energy use and the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that schools possess $2 billion worth of energy efficiency nationwide.