Jim Grieve, Director of Education	Jim Libbey, OCDSB Chair

The Better Schools Partnership: Stopping the Spiral

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) faces a dilemma shared by many school boards: how can it modernize and upgrade its $1 billion worth physical assets contained in aging schools and classrooms, in an environment of shrinking budgets and scarce resources? A solution was to partner with DukeSolutions Canada (now Ameresco Canada) to make school buildings more efficient and pare its $13 million annual energy bill. In 1997 a program proposed by DukeSolutions was accepted which went beyond earlier energy efficiency programs already saving the board $380,000 in annual savings-it also promised to minimize the disruption to students, teachers and other school board employees.

Phase I of the new energy efficiency program started in Summer 1998, and applied to 76 schools in the former Municipalities of Kanata, Nepean, Gloucester, West Carleton, Rideau, Goulbourn, Sumberland and Osgoode (now part of the newly amalgamated City of Ottawa), and had energy costs of close to $6 million per year. Buildings ranged in ages from 5 to 40 years, with the average age 35 years-old enough to require major renovations but not be obsolete.

Initiatives included building automation controls, highly visible lighting upgrades, building envelope sealing, water conservation measures, conversion of boilers from oil or electricity to natural gas and replacement of older, inefficient natural gas boilers.

The $14.3 million investment in energy efficiency related equipment has resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in annual utility costs of $6 million ($432,000 on gas bills, $1,148,000 on electricity, $130,000 for oil, and $184,000 for water), plus significant maintenance savings. As well, the entire project was implemented with little or no disruption, and the board's internal resources continued to deliver the essential services schools have come to expect.

With over two years of success and millions of dollars in annual energy savings under its belt, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board has launched Phase II of the project in all 150 sites. As part of the Better Schools Partnership™, this phase will employ many of the same measures as Phase I, working with the older school buildings found in the downtown core. The $16.5 million program, which will be implemented over the next two and a half to three years, is expected to pare an extra $1.5 million per year from the board's energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54,000 tonnes, close to a 30% reduction. This exceeds what Canada agreed to in the Kyoto Protocol (an international agreement to reduce CO₂ emissions by 20%).