Nashville Schools Cut Energy Costs $3M Per Year

February 20, 2009

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The Metropolitan Board of Public Education for the City of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, has announced significant environmental achievements as the initial five-year phase of a project between metro Nashville public schools and Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. nears completion.

The energy, environmental and operational improvements project has resulted in improvements to more than 135 facilities, delivering nearly $3 million in annual energy savings along with a significant reduction in greenhouse gases.

Projects included improvements to HVAC systems at more than 30 schools, as well as completing lighting retrofits at 110 schools. In addition, water conservation measures have been instituted at more than 50 area schools, conserving more than 100 million gallons of water, and chemical-free Flozone water treatment systems were installed at 93 schools. More than 70 schools received comprehensive building controls upgrades and in 15 schools Siemens installed state-of-the-art building automation systems.

Other achievements include system-wide, energy and resource reductions that deliver a total savings of $2.9 million for metro Nashville public schools. The overall power plant and HVAC system improvements have resulted in the reduction of greenhouse gases, in the aggregate amounts of 26,231,885 pounds of CO2, 53,093 pounds of NOx and 197,660 pounds of SO2.

During the contract period, starting in 2004, all area schools and school facilities, encompassing 187 structures, more than 14 million square feet and about 5,000 classrooms were involved in the project, said to be one of the largest energy performance contracts in Southeastern U.S. As the next phase continues, the total value of the contracted work to-date exceeds $45 million.

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