Published November 10, 2021
Watch and listen to our eleventh episode of Urban Green Live! Hosted by Urban Green Council CEO John Mandyck, this live interview series features international industry experts to answer your questions about a low carbon future.
On November 10, 2021, we welcomed Jeremy Shannon, Director of Sustainable Design and Resiliency at NYC School Construction Authority. During this episode, Jeremy and John discuss innovative school sustainability strategies and the SCA’s progress in shifting schools away from fossil fuels.
Key Takeaways
The New York City School Construction Authority (SCA) focuses on building new schools and modernizing existing ones.
-> The SCA builds about 10-12 new schools annually, covering roughly a million square feet of new construction each year, with a budget of about $4-5 billion annually.
-> They oversee around 150 million square feet of school space across approximately 1,500 buildings.
The Green School Guide, initiated in 2007, helps standardize sustainable practices in school construction and renovation.
-> The SCA has been a leader in electrification, focusing on converting heating, hot water systems, and kitchen loads from fossil fuels to electric systems.
-> They have successfully built all-electric schools, including a net-zero school in Staten Island; They’ve also initiated several pilots for all-electric schools to gather insights and improve future projects.
Speakers
John Mandyck
Chief Executive Officer
Jeremy Shannon
Director of Sustainable Design and Resiliency NYC School Construction Authority
Q&A
John Mandyck: What’s your view of schools not only serving the community function to educate our kids, but actually to be a community resource in times of extreme heat or storms from a resiliency standpoint for a community?
Jeremy Shannon: The community is going to naturally gravitate to the school building as a resource. I think that for resiliency, one of the big focuses we’re having is a high-performance facade. This goes a long way for resiliency. People in the passive house world know that if you have a facade with good insulation, great windows, and thermal breaks, you can maintain a manageable interior temperature even if the temperature swings drastically outside or it’s super cold for a week. These are some of the things we’re trying to incorporate for resiliency.
Additionally, most larger schools have backup generation systems. We’re currently studying how we could use battery storage as potential future backup systems. We’re not there yet, but we’re starting to explore how we can use battery storage.
John Mandyck: How do New York City schools compare to schools in other cities for reducing emissions?
Jeremy Shannon: Local Law 31 of 2016 was trying to set half of the benchmark for different buildings. The schools were already half below all of the other building types in terms of energy consumption.
I think it’s really about the density of the schools, the size of the schools, and also some of the previous measures that have been put into schools. So I think that that’s, it’s already a pretty low bar and we’re getting lower. We’re trying to get it so that all of our schools are going to be near net zero.
John Mandyck: How do you see other cities or other states approaching this? Is greening schools a national phenomenon or is it just one that’s unique to this area?
Jeremy Shannon: There’s a great community that USGBC has for green schools. On social media, everybody’s sharing ideas and passing that stuff along. New York City is not unique in this. Based on the resources we have and then the research and development that we’re able to invest in this, I would like to think that we are helping lead the way in some of these different technologies. But there’s a great community that we’re learning from all the time also.
John Mandyck: What’s the natural tension against doing this? Is it budgetary, is it policy moves? And how do you communicate benefits to parents and the general public?
Jeremy Shannon: In this city we’ve got great mandates already set up for us here. It’s just about doing the volume of work that’s necessary in my mind. I feel that over the last couple of years, what I’ve been excited to find through our research is that the technology is already there. It’s ready for us to start implementing, and excitingly, we are implementing those things. Now it’s about how do we scale that when we have 1,500 buildings and we’re constantly building new buildings? I think we’re doing the research, have the technology, and getting the information out there. There’s been a lot of cooperation and success.
John Mandyck: Do either parents or students ask how green are our schools or how can we green our schools?
Jeremy Shannon: A lot of our work is invisible work. There’s been plenty of times where people say I wish we were doing something with sustainability in New York City schools. People don’t see when that scaffolding is up, when they’re replacing a facade, or the insulation when the new building is going up. They don’t see those things. There’s so many different things that I could mention. Most of our work is kind of behind the scenes; you don’t really see that sustainability.
John Mandyck: Do you do these projects while kids are in school, or only in the summer?
Jeremy Shannon: Yeah, most of the SCA’s work is done after hours and in summer. There’s very little that we do during the school day. The summer for us is about six weeks of work, so we really have to do evening and weekend work on almost all of our projects.
John Mandyck: How do you monitor schools’ for performance?
Jeremy Shannon: In hundreds of schools we have building management systems that are designed. Since 2007 with the Green School Guide, they’ve been putting a lot of these BMS systems in. In a lot of existing schools, the Department of Education through the Division of School Facilities has been installing real-time meters in all those schools.
John Mandyck: How is it decided what school will get upgraded or what district? What are the criteria for prioritizing the retrofits that you need to do?
Jeremy Shannon: Every year, every system in the school gets a rating on its useful life and quality. That rating then goes through a very detailed capital planning process. It’s a very rigorous process to try and meet everyone’s needs.
John Mandyck: How can the work you’re doing help inform the broader market?
Jeremy Shannon: What I can extrapolate from the work that we’ve been doing with heat pump technology and all the energy modeling is that I think that the grid we have today is ready for high performance heat pumps in commercial buildings today. Not just schools, but in many buildings.
John Mandyck: How does the SCA work with the Division of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS)?
Jeremy Shannon: We have a very good relationship working with them on their energy management side. We work with them to take what the city is requiring and make sure it matches the schools requirements to meet our current mission, and also to achieve the decarbonization requirements.
John Mandyck: Can you talk more about the type of training your team receives? What is most valuable and what would you benefit more from?
Jeremy Shannon: There’s so much to learn from all of our colleagues. We’re constantly attending Urban Green events. We were just at the net zero conference recently. We attend the Passive House Conference, and the Green Schools conference that USGBC puts on. We read everything we can on electrification grid schools. Education in my department is a constant effort.
John Mandyck: Are you looking at carbon sequestration? What role do you see that playing in schools?
Jeremy Shannon: Carbon sequestration, as well as embodied carbon, are two things that are currently in our R&D. In the Green School Guide, we have the life cycle assessment for embodied carbon. We do that in our integrated design process for every school right now, every new building.
The city doesn’t currently have any mandates around embodied carbon, so we’re working to educate staff on what that means and how we track it. For carbon sequestration, we’re looking at carbon capture and other things like that. Embodied carbon and sequestration should be a constant holistic view of wherever you can reduce, reduce, and wherever you can sequester, you should sequester.
John Mandyck: Is there a plan to use school roofs for solar PV?
Jeremy Shannon: Yes, Local Law 94 of 2019 was a great push for everybody in the city to put solar on the roofs because of the city’s hundred megawatt for city-owned building push that’s been out there for a decade now. We want to help that as much as possible by prioritizing PV first, and then where PVs don’t make sense then we look to green roofs.
John Mandyck: Is there a way parents and the community can get involved in your work?
Jeremy Shannon: We’re trying to find ways that our work becomes more visible. I think that at the SCA, we have so much work to do on the capital side that we’re really keeping our heads down and trying to focus on that. I’d say that there’s a lot of untapped potential for parents and kids to get involved. The DOE’s sustainability program has a great director there andis a great program that’s already instituting a lot of these educational components. I think that’s the right place and we’re well connected with them.
John Mandyck: Does the SCA have any initiatives around diversity, equity and inclusion in environmental justice? What is the role of a school as a physical asset in the community when it comes to DEI in environmental justice?
Jeremy Shannon: Our Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) program for contractors is actually one of the largest used programs that has won many awards. I know they’re doing great efforts to increase that. We track areas that line up with those EJ issues, and we’re adding that layer into the decision making on which schools go first.
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