Denver Public Schools Sustainability Annual Report 2021-21 by Denver Public Schools

2020–2021

Denver Public Schools

Sustainability ANNUAL REPORT

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Table of Contents 05 Introduction 07/24 Budget 26

Revenues

09/28

Energy

11/33

Energy Performance Contracting

28 29 30 31 32

34 35 36 38 39

Real-time Electricity Monitoring Direct Digital Controls LED Retrofits Critical Peak Pricing Strategic Energy Management Financials Rebates powerED Program Master Systems Integration Transitioning to Sustainable Operations

13/40 Water 40 41 42

Reclaimed Water WeatherTrak Water Compass

15/43 Transportation 17/44 Sustainable Design 19/45 Gardens 21/47 Grants 23/48

Community Engagement

Internships

Meet the Team

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Introduction At Denver Public Schools (DPS), the Sustainability Team’s mission is to conserve and manage resources to address environmental impact, social development and economic prosperity. We are focused on creating a learning environment where sustainability is integral. It is our objective to maintain fiscal responsibility through sustainable practices with the understanding of how the built environment impacts our natural environment. We are proud to present this annual report and highlight our efforts toward this mission. We could not accomplish these goals without the collaboration and support of many individuals, departments and organizations both inside and outside of DPS. We would like to thank everyone who supported us in making DPS more sustainable.

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Budget Multiple resource management efforts described throughout this report resulted in a 4.5% reduction in total utility expenditures compared to a 3 year average.

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Energy In FY21, through utility rate management we saved $1,596,583. Efficiency measures yield an on going cost avoidance of $1,692,827. That’s $3,289,410 of avoided costs this year!

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Energy Performance Contracting DPS entered into the largest Energy Performance Contract in Colorado’s history, resulting in guaranteed savings of nearly $1,600,000 a year.

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Water In FY21, through utility rate management we saved $213,054 with an additional on-going annual cost avoidance of $6,374.

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Transportation We secured $337,048 in grants for Denver Public School’s first ever electric bus and charging station.

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Sustainable Design We focused on indoor air quality which resulted in 14 new construction standards.

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Gardens We have 126 gardens across our district, with 4 more in development.

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Grants The Sustainability Team secured $14,053 in health, wellness and garden grants.

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Community Engagement Focusing on education and community resulted in 21 speaking engagements to support classroom projects and initiatives.

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Budget

Throughout DPS’ 200+ buildings, the Sustainability Team manages the utilities and identifies opportunities for resource conservation. In FY21, utility expenditures for DPS totaled $17.4M. Through many different avenues stated throughout this report, we were able to reduce expenditures by 4.5% or $825K from a 3 year average for fiscal years ‘17, ‘18 and ‘19. We chose to compare current fiscal year to a 3 year average that does not include FY20 due to COVID operations impacting half the year. In FY21, onsite solar provided 6.7% of district electricity needs but accounted for only 1.52% of electricity costs. We reduced FY21’s electricity consumption by 16.5% or 17.7 M kWh and water consumption by 3.8% or 19.2 M Gals compared to a three year average. Our weather-normalized natural gas consumption increased by 10.8% or 126.4 therms per heating degree day due to increasing the amount of fresh air ventilation to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission within buildings. In addition to reducing our utility consumption, we incorporate more efficient equipment when applicable and receive incentives for these upgrades described throughout this report.

Fiscal Year 2021 Utility Expenditures $17.4M Electricity

$9,310,377

Natural Gas

$3,644,869

Water

$2,161,519

Wastewater

$701,036

Storm Water

$1,548,416

Fire Service

$27,381

Data sourced from the Sustainability Team’s Energy Manager Software upon receipt and input of utility bill; slight discrepancies may exist from DPS’ financial system which reflects timing differences between bills received and bills processed and paid.

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Budget Fiscal Year 2017–19 Utility Expenditures $18.2M Electricity

$10,964,353

Natural Gas

$3,309,133

Water

$1,962,082

Wastewater

$743,026

Storm Water

$1,215,034

Fire Service

$26,375

As another cost saving measure, DPS purchases 83% of our natural gas from a third party vendor that provides transport gas. In FY21, the average price of gas from Xcel was $4.875 per decatherm, compared to $2.344 per decatherm for our transport gas. This resulted in a savings of $1.6 M.

Xcel Natural Gas vs. Tansport Natural Gas Transport Natural Gas 82.2% Xcel Natural Gas

17.8%

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Budget BUDGET: REVENUES The Sustainability Team works to maximize efficiency rebates from construction and maintenance projects and receives much of that revenue for our projects and programs. We also receive a small amount of revenue from the sale of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from a few of the solar arrays that DPS owns. This fiscal year the Sustainability Team received $672,000 in revenue with 98% of that from rebates. Most of the rebates were from Xcel Energy for installing energy efficient equipment, but we also received a substantial rebate from Denver Water for water efficient landscaping at our Samsonite building. The largest rebates we received were from Bundle 6 of the District-wide LED Retrofit project at $301,295 and Energy Design Assistance (EDA) at our new Paul Sandoval Building 5 at $87,852.

Sustainability Fiscal Year 2021 Revenue: Rebates and RECs $672,000

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61%

Lighting

13%

EDA

10%

Motors/Drives

Heating

Cooling

Water

RECs

Cxing

BACK In addition to revenues, the Sustainability Team identifies and implements opportunities to avoid costs through energy savings measures and other resource management opportunities. Not only do we incorporate more efficient equipment when applicable and receive incentives for these upgrades, we are also reducing our utility consumption. This fiscal year, we avoided $173,100/annually in electricity and natural gas expenditures through installation of the efficient rebated equipment. This equates to 1.6M kWh/year and 13,700 therms/year.

BACK

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Energy

Energy ENERGY: REAL TIME ELECTRICITY MONITORING Real-time electricity monitoring, which is a combination of metering and analytics, allows for detailed energy management insights and opportunities for student and staff engagement. With plans to go district-wide, this year we expanded metering to 27 additional buildings, bringing our total to 42 school buildings. In addition to installing meter hardware, we began a real-time analytics pilot with Xcel Energy’s Infowise program in June, which uses PowerTakeOff software. The total district-wide eGauge project has allocated $196,000 to date, including meter installations which occurred in Summer ‘21. We anticipate that the total cost of installing meters will be $450,000 and total annual analytics is estimated to be $100,000 per year. Real-time monitoring allows us to demonstrate the value of our solar arrays, reduce energy costs, ensure billing accuracy, and engage teachers and students. It has been shown to reduce electricity costs by 8% annually with a typical payback of 2.7 years. If DPS saves 3% annually on electricity costs, the payback including 5 years of analytics will be 3 years.

Real Time Power Monitoring Greenwood Academy - Total Power

250 KW

THUR. APRIL 8

FRI. APRIL 9

SAT. APRIL 10

SUN. APRIL 11

MON. APRIL 12

TUE. APRIL 13

WED. APRIL 14

219 KW

Demand

188 KW 156 KW 125 KW 94 KW 63 KW 31 KW 0 KW 12:00 A.M.

12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

Total Power Demand

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12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

Grid Power

12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

12:00 P.M.

Solar Power

12:00 A.M.

12:00 P.M.

12:00 A.M.

Energy

ENERGY: DIRECT DIGITAL CONTROLS In October 2020, we presented a business case to upgrade our pneumatic systems to direct digital controls (DDC). We received $2M from 2016 Bond Reserves to implement DDC upgrades at 5-6 schools. The project has been managed by the Planning, Design and Construction team and started implementation in June of 2021. This project is due to be completed by December 2021. Upgrading our pneumatic systems allows us to collect actionable data through our building automation system and gives us insight into how our buildings are operating from comfort to mechanical functionality. This allows us to troubleshoot operational issues from a central location making maintenance more efficient.

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Energy ENERGY: LED RETROFITS The Sustainability Team initiated a district-wide LED Retrofit project that was included in the 2016 Bond and was managed by the Planning, Design and Construction team. The one-for-one retrofit focused on all linear fluorescent fixtures and affected every building DPS owns or manages. This massive undertaking was implemented in six bundles, with Bundle 6 finishing in FY21. The district-wide LED retrofit resulted in substantial ongoing savings, as verified by Xcel Energy: • $1,512,000/year • 14,345,000 kWh/ year • 5,130 kW/ per year The retrofit also resulted in one-time rebates totaling $2.8M, which were mostly used to fund much-needed capital improvements in DPS’ 1860 Lincoln building. The funds from Bundle 6 were used to support the Sustainability Team.

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Energy ENERGY: CRITICAL PEAK PRICING In Spring 2020, we enrolled two of our buildings, Emily Griffith Campus and North High School, in Xcel’s Critical Peak Partners program (CPP) as a pilot to test if this program could indeed provide us with fiscal savings. The program is a partnership in which we agree to do what we can in the enrolled buildings to reduce electricity consumption during critical peak events called by Xcel. These are events that Xcel calls 24 hours in advance in anticipation of increased demand on the electrical system due to weather conditions, primarily related to high temperatures. The events last 4 hours and are typically in the afternoon from about 3 pm to 7 pm. Our benefit is that we pay reduced electricity demand charges throughout the year but pay higher electricity use rates during an event. For these two buildings, we saved a combined total of $6,583 for FY21. We are enrolling six more buildings for fiscal year 22 and look to implement set-point procedures to maximize our savings and reduce electricity use during these events while not sacrificing building occupant comfort.

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BACK ENERGY: STRATEGIC ENERGY MANAGEMENT Xcel Energy’s Strategic Energy Management (SEM) program offers a holistic approach to continuous energy saving opportunities. Through an MOU agreement, Xcel and DPS have committed to building a culture around energy efficiency through capital measure identification, custom rebate support, statistical regression energy modeling, retro commissioning (RCx) support and energy management policy. In the first year of participation in the SEM program, DPS has recognized over 1.2 GWh of capital project savings with an additional ~0.5 GWh of operational and behavioral savings. These operational and behavioral savings are the bi-product of the robust energy culture throughout the district. The savings are reconciled through the regression modeling efforts at each building. These savings will continue to grow as program participation continues.

BACK

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Energy Performance Contracting

Energy Performance Contracting is a unique financial mechanism that allows public institutions to implement facility improvements now through future utility savings. We entered into the largest Energy Performance Contract in the history of the Colorado Energy Office (CEO) in 2019. We put out a request for proposals and McKinstry won the contract. The savings from this project is guaranteed through the Colorado Energy Office’s mandate of 3 years of measurement and verification performed by the contractor and verified by the CEO as a third party.

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BACK EPC: FINANCIALS Denver Public School’s energy performance contract (EPC) provides $31.4M in facility upgrades at 27 DPS building, including 14 additional sites for solar arrays, while saving the district nearly $1.6M/year in utility and operational costs once construction is completed. The project is entirely self-funded and backed by guaranteed energy savings. It is overseen by the State of Colorado’s Energy Performance Contracting program and performed by our contractor, McKinstry. This flagship project is the largest of its kind in Colorado history. It upgrades classrooms, enhances facilities, improves maintenance, and reduces waste—all at no added cost to the district. EPC works by leveraging guaranteed energy savings to accomplish work within existing budgets, without requesting additional funding from the taxpayers. The EPC upgrades include: • Boilers, chillers, and air handling unit replacements • New DDC controls • LED lighting upgrades • Irrigation controls • Building controls optimization • Solar PV (renewable energy) • powerED, TSO, and MSI programs • Water conservation

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BACK EPC: FINANCIALS Accomplishments in FY21 • This project has involved partnership between the contractor, McKinstry, DPS Facilities, Planning, Design and Construction, and various groups inside of Facilities including Sustainability, Maintenance shops, and Operations. • 99% complete with construction. Completion of remaining punch list items anticipated in October 2021. • Brought 14 solar sites on-line since October of 2020 - that’s 22 semi-truck loads of panels! • 49 Transformers , 2 Cooling Towers, 6 AHUs, 6 Boilers, 2 chillers, 3 DDC conversions, lots of pumps, VFDs, lights, and more installed with over 50 crane pick days

EPC: REBATES McKinstry worked with Xcel Energy and Denver Water, with guidance from the Sustainability Team, to maximize efficiency rebates resulting from facility improvements. DPS also receives revenue from the sale of Renewable Energy Credits from the solar arrays that were installed as part of the EPC. This fiscal year DPS received $248,000 with 84% of that from rebates. The largest single rebates DPS received were from the WeatherTrak smart irrigation system at $51,150 and the evaporative pre-cooled chiller at our MLK building at $30,360.

EPC Fiscal Year 2021 Revenue: Rebates and RECs $248,000 Motors/Drives

28%

Lighting

22%

Water

21%

RECs

16%

Cooling

12%

Kitchen Vent.

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BACK EPC: powerED PROGRAM The powerED program leverages existing initiatives and creates new programs to promote sustainability, engage the student body, identify energy and operational savings opportunities, collaborate and train staff, and provide a quantifiable return on the program’s investment. The program consists of reducing energy use through ongoing commissioning, performance reporting, occupant engagement, and automated data analysis of DPS’s facilities. This program focuses on identifying low- and no-cost opportunities to drive energy savings and optimize operational practices in our facilities. This is primarily accomplished through ongoing site audits, data analysis, training, and collaboration with our operational team. Additionally, the program focuses on engaging and empowering building occupants to take action to save energy and cut waste in facilities. This is primarily accomplished through targeted communications, learning opportunities, activities, and challenges with building occupants. The powerED program includes on-site time for a McKinstry engineer to identify low-and no-cost energy and operational savings, building automation monitoring, and analytics services. This will be used to monitor the ongoing performance of any controls modifications implemented as part of the EPC, interpret the alerts, and provide root cause analysis on the issues. It also includes on-site time for a McKinstry program manager to facilitate occupant engagement, including utilizing an occupant engagement web platform and visual campaign.

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BACK Accomplishments in FY21 • Provided detailed training for Sustainability Team’s building optimization specialists on process and methods to conduct Retro-commissioning in targeted facilities • Full deployment of the Reveal performance dashboard: utilities, analytics, renewables, savings, opportunities, etc. • Within the Reveal dashboard $113K in energy savings opportunities identified to date; ~$40-50K implemented • Facilitated formulation of powerED Steering Committee • Provided training and support to selected school Energy Champions • Reveal Dashboard – The Reveal Dashboard identified an issue that resulted in significant cost savings at Abraham Lincoln High School. A Reveal work ticket for a single classroom initiated an investigation by one of our building optimization specialists. He discovered that none of the classroom HVAC units were following the building schedule, which resulted in the equipment running during unoccupied periods. Fixing this control issue yielded an estimated $7,700 in annual cost savings (as estimated from Lincoln’s real-time electricity meter).

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BACK EPC: MASTER SYSTEM INTEGRATION Scope – District Wide The MSI program includes a Building Automation System Assessment, Capital Planning, and recommended revisions to BAS Standards and Specifications. The goal of this work is to provide a plan to update BAS systems in a consistent, cost effective, manner that supports operational efficiency and effectiveness. This effort aims to aid DPS in establishing these new processes to facilitate the alignment of planning, installation and warranty of BAS projects with the new plan. Accomplishments in FY21 • Provided Denver Public Schools with a revised set of Integrated Automation (25 00 00), Intelligent Building Automation System (25 50 00), and Integrated Automation Control Sequences for HVAC (25 95 00) specifications based on input from stakeholders across DPS and industry best practices. • Assessed and documented building automation systems in 80+ DPS buildings, including obsolete/pneumatic systems and inconsistencies between physical infrastructure and system information. • Established template for system documentation and upgrade plans for all schools based on DPS feedback.

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BACK EPC: TRANSITIONING TO SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONS Scope – District Wide TSO provides a process and program to transform the operations of DPS facilities to best-in-class facility-standards, covering aspects of equipment operating procedures, work order management, asset management, warranty management, and resource and labor analysis. The TSO program is structured around 4 core components: 1) asset management, 2) warranty management, 3) operating procedure development, and 4) maintenance resource allocation analysis and tracking. McKinstry will work closely with key stakeholders and teams within the District to implement these processes and procedures, transition existing systems and practices, and transition full ownership to the District. This effort aims to aid DPS in establishing these new processes, such that after the project is transitioned, the District can build upon these tools and implement them elsewhere in-house. McKinstry will work with DPS to set key performance indicators (KPIs) early in the project in order to track, demonstrate, and optimize performance. Accomplishments in FY21 • Completed a labor analysis for the Preventative Maintenance Shop with recommended staffing levels and an estimated total cost savings of $1.8M from improved preventive maintenance • Completing a full year’s cycle in September of 630 new improved, standardized, and centralized preventive maintenance plans for the HVAC Shop • Piloted new warranty management standards, including improved warranty tracking and warranty labeling for 70 new McKinstry-installed assets

BACK

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Water: Reclaimed Water

In order to reduce expenditures and our impact on water resources for Denver and Colorado, DPS is using reclaimed water from Denver Water at 15 of our sites. For FY21, at 15 of our sites we saved $213,054 by using reclaimed water instead of potable water to irrigate.

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Water: Irrigation

The WeatherTrak smart irrigation system was installed at 27 schools in the summer of 2020 as part of the Energy Performance Contract. Smart irrigation systems adjust watering based on weather conditions and soil moisture content and monitor for broken irrigation heads, shutting off water to a leaking zone and notifying technicians that a repair is needed. The system will also allow us to separate irrigation usage from building usage at sites where there is a common meter for both uses, allowing us to better account for water usage and implement conservation measures. Pending the Energy Performance Contract’s Measurement and Verification, it is projected that we will save $68,400/year which equates to 14,750 kGals/year.

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Water: Domestic

DPS has engaged in a pilot of Hydropoint’s WaterCompass water usage monitoring service for 90 days to test the system. WaterCompass learns the building’s water usage patterns and monitors for continuous flow that would indicate a leak or leaks within the building. We chose East High School for the pilot because, as a large building, it has high water usage. It also has a dedicated irrigation meter, so WaterCompass will only monitor water used within the building. We seek to be better stewards of our water and financial resources and we are looking to this kind of technology to help us closely monitor our water usage real time instead of relying on invoices that we do not receive for a month or more after the usage has occurred, reducing our ability to respond to leaks except in the case of catastrophic failure of the plumbing system.

BACK

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Transportation

Through Xcel’s Electric Vehicle Supply Infrastructure program and Colorado’s Alt Fuels program, we received $337K in funding to install a dedicated transformer and meter, which serve an EV charger. This charger was installed in June 2021 in anticipation of receiving our first electric school bus at the start of FY22. This project was in collaboration with our Transportation Department.

BACK

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Sustainable Design

The Sustainability Team promotes sustainable design and construction by reviewing project designs and influencing standards. This year, we updated 14 construction standards to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) for students. These updates were based on the IAQ standards in the LEED v4 green building rating system. In collaboration with DPS’ Planning team, we also influenced the “Reimagining Montbello” initiative by adding sustainable design evaluation criteria to the project’s RFP and encouraging the hiring of a sustainable design consultant. We also initiated a stakeholder process to develop Sustainable Design Principles and Goals. This process included education sessions on netzero energy and electrification, reviewing the success of our most sustainable campus, the Evie G. Dennis Campus, and brainstorming to develop Sustainable Design Principles. These principles and goals are being used to influence new construction and major renovations.

BACK

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Gardens

Though COVID kept our students and educators out of the gardens last season and we were unable to support classes in-person for most of the spring; we have much to celebrate. Gardens are safer places to work toward a common goal during the pandemic. Social distancing and other measures meant many people were craving social interaction and community. We were able to forge new partnerships with several new community partners and grow our partnerships already in place. As the pandemic stretched into summer 2020 we realized our gardens themselves were sanctuaries and centers for community. As our students and educators were not able to use the gardens, multiple community partners such as Grow Local Colorado and SustainEd Farms were able to grow over 1 ton of produce for our school and community food banks. We have never been able to grow so much food to share before and much of the food has gone directly to the families of the students we serve.

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Gardens

Our partnerships continue to grow and we will provide even more produce in summer and fall of 2021. These partnerships will also allow us to better serve our schools and educators by having the garden spaces ready for students when they return to school in fall. Community gardeners can serve as experts and support our educators while forging bonds between our schools and larger communities. We are excited to see what how this summer compares and the amazing impact we are having on our community. • Our community partnerships grew to an additional 15 new garden sites for summer 2021. • CALC grant funds allowed us to purchase 18 water timers to decrease the time community partners spend water and increase the number of sites maintained. • We provided seed starting supplies, lights and timers to 18 schools to serve over 30 classrooms through grant funding. • Garden of Youth has 6 of 8 garden sites active for summer. Partnerships from the 2020 growing season grew more produce than ever before: – SustainED Farms harvested 1,500 lbs from North, West and DGS NE – Community volunteers at Manual harvested 400 lbs for MetroCaring food bank – Grow Local Colorado harvested 134 lbs of produce for the South HS food bank – Multiple other gardens grew produce for school or local food banks and did not record totals • Community partners donated over 300 garden seedlings and 90 grow bags to classrooms and students • Fostered a new partnership with Lincoln Hills Cares to schedule 8 workdays to maintain some of our highest need garden sites.

BACK

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Grants

The Sustainability Team works diligently to identify opportunities for grant funding and have received the following support: • DPS Medicaid funding provided $9,553 to purchase seed starting supplies for classrooms, garden materials for spring preparation and materials and funded 3 paid internships for the Garden of Youth program. • Community Active Living Coalition grant of $1,000 used to purchase water timers for 18 garden sites maintained by community partners. • Two Westerra grants received: $500 to add perennial and sensory plants at Maxwell Elementary and $500 for renovating the garden at Thomas Jefferson HS. • Grant funds not spent in 2020 due to COVID provided over $3,000 to support gardens and the Garden of Youth program with uniforms, water bottles and garden supplies. • Our DPS Wellness grant was used to purchase 2 ergonomic chairs, pots for office plants, personal health items and carseat back support for the Building Optimization Team. We were also able to get a portable disc golf goal for our outdoor meetings once we can meet together. • Division of Vocational Rehabilitation provided payroll for 19 Garden of Youth interns and 1 job coach for the summer of 2021.

BACK

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Community Engagement

• We had 22 Volunteer Opportunities to support garden sites in. We had 17 parent/ student workdays and 5 corporate volunteer days. • 5 virtual public speaking engagements to share our programming and successes • Sustainability and Garden Forum in advance of Earth Week • 4 speaking engagements with college classes and tribal members • Youth Sustainability Board support • Cooperative initiative with Metro and DU to create a study to better understand obstacles and how to best support our teachers engaging in sustainability education. • Student Engagement – 21 speaking engagements to support class projects and initiatives – 30 classrooms received seed starting supplies – Multiple student driven Earth Day projects received support – 26 Garden Workdays and more scheduled through summer – 13 Garden Education Workshops – Protocols developed and approved for schools to apply for goats and solar ovens

BACK

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Internships

In the Fall of 2020 we also hosted our first graduate student intern from the University of Denver. The intern worked on identifying sustainability curriculum and supporting material that she aligned to the Amplify science curriculum, which our schools are using for 1st through 8th grade. She focused on grades 4–5 and identified materials that were both specific to science, but also materials that could be used for literacy education that tied back to the subjects the students are studying in their science classes. She compiled the material into PDFs aligned to grade level and topic and these have been added to our website for teachers to access. Our first high school Sustainability Intern helped develop our webpage while gaining work experience and learning about careers in sustainability. After a year hiatus, we are excited that Garden of Youth was back for its 10th season. We had 26 paid student interns working at six of our garden sites through the summer. They practiced soft job skill development working alongside an experienced job coach. Produce goes home to families, food banks and into cafeterias through the Garden to Cafeteria program. All interns were paid through Division of Vocational Rehabilitation or stipends through ACEConnect in DPS. We funded three interns with DPS Medicaid Funding.

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Meet the Team

From Left to Right: Roger Doris, Building Optimization Specialist; Brian Slota, Building Optimization Specialist; Eric Punkay, Sustainability Analyst; Chris Woodburn, Sustainability Program SpecialistGardens; LeeAnn Kittle, Director of Sustainability; Adam West, Project and Energy Efficiency Specialist; Darel Leedy, Controls Engineer/Supervisor

@DPS_Sustainability sustainability.dpsk12.org

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