School of the Holy Child, an independent, Catholic college preparatory school for girls located in Rye, New York, announced that it is actively seeking ways to become more environmentally responsible. As a first step, the school hired White Plains, New York-based Energy Reduction Solutions (ERS) to calculate its carbon footprint. School administrators plan to use the data from ERS’s report to reduce the school’s energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2010 and beyond.

To calculate the school’s carbon footprint, ERS measured GHG emissions resulting from campus-wide electrical usage, heating, transportation and leakage of air conditioning equipment refrigerants all sources of GHG emissions. The company then translated the emissions, which are measured in CO2e metric tons, into an easy-to-understand equivalent gallons of gasoline per-student to make it easier for school administrators, students, and parents to visualize the school’s environmental impact and compare it to similar schools in the area.

“We hear about carbon footprints all the time, but we didn’t know the size of ours or what is considered reasonable," said Frank Lutz, the school’s director of Technology and Plant Management. “ERS’s translation of our GHG emissions into a known tangible substance made it easy to visualize the impact our actions have on the environment, and it became much clearer to us how we could become a more sustainable institution.”

Lutz said the school is exploring ways to implement energy reduction measures to reduce the building’s carbon footprint for 2010 and beyond. “We are proud to have taken the first step by calculating our emissions and determining how we compare with schools of similar size and location. Now we can do something about it," he says.

“Unlike most of the industrialized countries of Western Europe that have adopted the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is a legally binding international agreement that sets targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, the United States has not,” says Josh Simon, CRM, vice president of Energy Reduction Solutions.

“Schools such as Holy Child are smart to get ahead of the curve, because curtailing greenhouse gas emissions is likely to become mandated by a carbon tax or possibly by a cap and trade regime. Besides, a carbon footprint study helps identify ways to cut energy expenses, since it clearly identifies the sources of energy use and their quantities," he concludes. 