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Sustainability Committee Audit Findings

Data and Goals

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Sustainability Committee Mission Statement

We are a collaborative committee including students, staff, and board members with a common goal of implementing more sustainable practices within the Penfield Central School District. Together, we are working towards establishing a “sustainability plan” to structure guidelines and a timeline for our district in order to accomplish a significant reduction in waste and carbon emissions in the next several years and beyond. We are also working to increase awareness in our district surrounding climate change.

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Energy Audit Process

Wendel Energy through NYSERDA P-12 Schools Initiative and Benchmarking Program
Energy assessments at all of the schools
Operational assessments /walk throughs at Harris Hill and PHS
Benchmarking perspectives

B3 Benchmarking and ENERGY STAR®

Data inputted into the system from July 2020- June 2021

important first step in sustainability plan was getting a baseline and benchmarking and conducting audits of the systems already in place
We conducted both energy and waste audits.
worked w a company called wendel energy through -> NYSERDA program (p-12 schools initiative & benchmarking program) -> Wendel has done a great job , connected really well with us, explained things in an easy to understand way, and made sure to include us
Through the process of Energy Benchmarking wendel measured and analyzed our buildings’ utility costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy use over time and then they were able to compare it to energy models, or to other buildings in their systems
conducted energy assessments at all of the schools -> operational assessments/walk throughs at Harris Hill + PHS
a few perspectives used to benchmark our energy usage as a district and we found the most relevant and useful ones were the B3 benchmarking and energy star
Wendel was able to do this so quickly by using information the district already had about our energy use. So we used from July 2020 - June 2021 for all of the building except indian landing where we used July 2018 to June 2019 due to an issue at the school with the meter reading

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Districtwide Results

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Benchmarking Perspectives

ENERGY STAR Score- Evaluates energy performance based on physical assets, operations, and occupant behavior. Score on a scale of 1-100 where higher scores represent more efficient buildings. Buildings with a score greater than 75 can obtain ENERGY STAR certification. The national average ENERGY STAR score for K-12 schools is 67.
B3 Peer Rating- compares a school’s energy use to other schools participating in NYSERDA’s P-12 Schools initiative with similar use of space on a 1-100 percentile scale.

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Building Benchmarking Scores

Building	ENERGY STAR Score	B3 Peer Rating
Harris Hill Elementary	31	42
Cobbles Elementary	56	71
Indian Landing Elementary	59	62
Penfield High School	63	28
Scribner Elementary and Bay Trail Middle School	72	72
District Office	74	70

So you can see here that based on the energy star scale harris hill was the worst performing, and the district office was the best performing. Currently none of the buildings in the district evaluated would be eligible for energy star certification (the closest being the district office) Based on the B3 peer rating, 4/6 buildings are performing better than 50% of their peers participating in the NYSERDA P-12 Benchmarking program. Based on the B3 scale PHS has the lowest rating of 28 and Scribner and Bay Trail have the highest rating of 72.

An operational assessment for two buildings of the sustainability committees choice were included as a part of the NYSERDA Program with Wendel. We chose the high school and harris hill.

Co gen system makes the b3 peer rating lower for PHS bc it uses natural gas, and other schools within the system don’t have co gen systems so they aren’t using as much as natural gas

Why is harris hill is so low? Design of the building (no walls) is inefficient, system was designed for an open floor plan so as they put walls up the system doesn’t know how to function.

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Harris Hill Elementary Operational Assessments

Harris Hill

Recommended energy conservation measures:

Interior Lighting, Gymnasium Ventilation, and Kitchen Ventilation Upgrades, as well as Retro Commissioning

Potential cost of recommendations: $59,367
Annual energy and maintenance savings: $9,635
Simple payback time: 15.8 years

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Penfield High School Operational

Assessments

PHS

Recommended energy Conservation Measures:

Interior Lighting, Gymnasium Ventilation, and Kitchen Ventilation Upgrades, as well as Variable Frequency Drive Pumps, Pool cover, Builder Replacement

Potential cost of recommendations: $131,225
Annual energy and maintenance savings: $20,251
Simple payback time: 11.1 years

So they recommended interior lighting upgrades, gymnasium ventilation and kitchen ventilation upgrades as well as the use of variable frequency drive pumps. So these recommendations were generally very similar to harris hill. THey also made a couple additional recommendations with which they recognized that pool covers and boiler replacements (sorry not builder replacement, that’s a typo on the slide) would need to be looked into further before they were considered or implemented.
The estimated cost was $131,225, with annual savings of 20,253 dollars, and a simple payback time of 11.8 yrs.
These are just recommendations made by wendel based on their expertise of energy efficiency and as the the sustainability committee uses this data and recommendations to craft the sustainability plan next year, these recommendations will be reviewed and determined how much of an impact they would have. The information about the districts energy consumption as well as our energy star scores and and B3 peer ratings will also be taken forward into the sustainability plan process.

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Food Waste Audit

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What did we do?

Our club (with the help of Sustainability Committee member Katie Rygg and club advisor Mr. Wallen) conducted a food waste audit during 5th and 6th period lunch at PHS on March 21st of this year. We used the same methods in both the Cafeteria and the Commons.
Students were asked to sort their trash into 7 different trash bins. Club members assisted students in sorting their trash, at times digging through the bins when food items were sorted incorrectly.
Our 7 categories: Fruits and Vegetables, Meat, Dairy, Trays, Packaging, Drinks, and Other Food.

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Why did we do this?

Benchmarking

To find how much food/packaging our students are wasting during lunch periods, and what food students are wasting. Using this information, we can set goals to reduce this waste.

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What did we learn?

In total, we weighed 90.5 pounds of waste during two lunch periods at PHS. We estimated that in a given day, PHS students dispose of 181 pounds of waste just in lunch periods every day.

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What is the impact?

For context, every 100 pounds of food waste sends approximately 8.3 pounds of methane into the atmosphere. Methane has 86 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide. This means Penfield is contributing to over 15 pounds of methane emissions per day in high school lunch periods alone.

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(Percentages of 90.5 lbs of waste)

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The Biggest Takeaway

We are wasting an estimated 40+ pounds of fruit and vegetables every single day in our PHS lunch periods. This is more than enough waste to begin a successful and effective compost program here at PHS.

If an internal plan for composting at PHS were developed, almost ¼ of our daily food waste, would be eliminated.

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Goals:

Window/door replacements, adding door sweeps to mitigate heat/cooling loss
LED Lighting
Local food procurement (ex. Harvest of the Month)
Planning for increased population with sustainable architecture upon expanding schools
Replacing appliances/infrastructure with sustainable alternatives as they expire
Kitchen and gymnasium ventilation (w/ CO2 sensors)
Install solar panels where possible
Build safe routes to schools for students - biking & walking instead of car transport (collaborate with town and state)
Install EV charging stations
Transition to electric school buses
Support PHS Environmental Club to advocate for locally relevant climate solutions
Reimagine schools as community centers for extreme weather events caused by climate change (heat waves/power outages)
Pool cover
Variable Frequency Drive Pumps
Ensure office equipment such as printers, copiers, etc. are turned off or in sleep mode when not in use
Composting program

Working towards a statewide goal to reduce emissions 40% by 2030.

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Next steps:

The data and takeaways from these audits will be included in final sustainability plan document.
This information will be used to inform the sustainability plan’s goals, recommendations, and implementation as they are created by the sustainability committee next year.