Energy Use at Princeton High School

What's wrong with this picture?

Let me give you a hint. An electrician who used to work at Princeton High School once told me that he was able to save the school $30,000 in energy bills over the course of two months, by working with custodians, teachers and others to get them to turn off lights and computers when the rooms weren't being used, and by adjusting air handlers so they ran no more than was necessary. For example, custodians customarily turned gym lights on when they arrived at 6am, but students didn't use the gyms until two hours later. A small change in routine helped reduce the wasteful lighting of these and other empty rooms.

Those two months of extraordinary energy savings were part of a competition the school participated in to reduce energy use--a good motivation, but after the two months were over, everything I've heard thus far suggests that the school returned to its wasteful ways.

The $10.9 million dollar referendum that Princeton voters just approved for infrastructure improvements at the schools may make these gym lights and other components of the building more efficient, but it will not change people's behavior. As the competition proved, huge savings can be achieved by smarter use of existing equipment.

Of the two approaches to energy savings--updated equipment and behavioral change--the latter is vastly cheaper but requires the sort of persistence and coordination that can only be sustained when an institution is committed to energy and resource conservation. My impression, including a year working as a volunteer with the schools to improve recycling back in 2006-7, is that environmental sustainability has been given a low priority in Princeton's public schools when compared with other nearby communities. Whether it's energy use or recycling, the students, staff and volunteers who really care have tended to get frustrated and eventually decided their time would be better spent cultivating greener pastures elsewhere. Some progress has been made at the elementary schools, with schoolyard gardens and generally more successful recycling than at the middle and high schools, but there is so much more that could be done. Hopefully past will not be prelude, and the schools will realize that instilling a stronger environmental ethic in staff and students is at least as important as the upcoming facility improvements.