Richmond School District earns prestigious energy conservation award By Melanie Franner
It’s not often that a school district takes the lead in and outside of the classroom. The Richmond School District has managed to do just that and, as a result, is the 2014 recipient of the prestigious Power Smart Leader award, BC Hydro’s highest level of customer recognition for energy conservation. “Power Smart Leaders are a select group of BC Hydro customers who continuously demonstrate a best-in-class approach to strategic energy management and an ongoing commitment to energy conservation in British Columbia,” states Joanna Sofield, general manager of Power Smart at BC Hydro. The Power Smart Leader award is part of BC Hydro’s Power Smart Excellence Awards program. The Power Smart Excellence Awards program has been in existence since 2003, but the Power Smart Leader award was created in 2010. Since then, it has been given out to only 25 organizations.
C is for conservation The Richmond School District’s Power Smart Leader award comes on the heels of the district’s long and dedicated commitment to energy conservation. “The Richmond School District has been very proactive in energy conservation for many years,” Dina Mously, manager of sustainability and energy with the Richmond School District, explains. “We have incorporated energy conservation in our district-wide Environmental Stewardship Policy since 2011. The policy has eight distinct focus areas, and energy conservation supported by a green fund is one of them. The Environmental Stewardship Policy has been 14
Ops Talk • Spring 2015
BC Hydro president and CEO Jessica McDonald and Richmond School District general manager of facilities and maintenance Mike Beausoleil.
in place since 1998 and acknowledges the school district’s responsibility to educate students and provide opportunities for staff to develop social responsibility, ecological literacy, sustainable behaviours and actions.” The Richmond School District uses four developmental objectives, of which environmental stewardship is one, as “lenses” to help the staff ensure that the district stays focused on key priorities. According to Mously, the Richmond School District operates on a threeyear evolving sustainability and energy management plan. Not only does the district have a dedicated department to support this cause, but it also has managed to consistently reduce its energy consumption over the past seven years. In 2012, the district reduced total electricity consumption by approximately 330,000 kilowatt-hours, which
was a two per cent reduction over the previous year. In 2013, the district further reduced consumption by more than 600,000 kilowatt-hours, which is almost a four per cent reduction in usage over the previous year. And all of these kilowatt-hour savings translate into real dollars. “We saved the equivalent of $136,000 in 2014 over 2013 as a result of our energy conservation efforts,” states Mously.
P is for proactive A significant part of the Richmond School District’s most recent ongoing success with energy conservation is due to its commitment to BC Hydro’s Continuous Optimization program. The district has successfully implemented the program in 10 of its 48 schools. “We started with our secondary schools,” states Mously, adding that the secondary schools are the largest
