At budget-crunching time, school administrators and business officials sometimes find themselves trimming the district's budget for teachers, textbooks, and technology in order to cover ballooning energy costs. Nearly one-third of the energy consumed in the average U.S. school is wasted. The country's least efficient schools use four times more…

Done right, green is not only the right thing to do, it's a good business move. During the past year, the author has talked with quite a few school business officials. Some are on board with "going green," whereas others are still leery. Some aren't quite sure what "green schools" are. Some say that it doesn't matter to the community how green the…

At Montpelier High School (MHS) in Vermont, students are accustomed to making changes in their school and community. Over the last six years, MHS students have participated in the Annual Winooski River Cleanup Project, the construction of a solar-powered greenhouse that provides produce for the school's cafeteria, and a thriving composting program…

Being green means different things to different people. Some suggest that being green means saving energy, not wasting paper towels, going solar, harnessing wind, using less fertilizer, or buying products that are organically grown. Given that being green can mean a lot of things, what does "being green" or "going green" mean to both you and your…

A challenge facing community colleges nationwide is to reduce the carbon footprint of campuses by initiating green technology initiatives. This case study assessed the effect of switching from paper assignments to a learning management system at ABC Community College. The topic is important because federal and state funding, as well as…

The author reports on the reigning economic calculus that helps to drive constant expansion and poor utilization of space on many campuses. The author states that colleges could charge for utilities, which might encourage departments to save energy. Most American colleges do not charge for space--in part because doing so would raise the hackles of…

This case study examines how energy conservation efforts in one public high school contributed to both sustainability education and the adoption of sustainable behavior within educational and organizational practice. Individual role models, school facilities, school governance and school culture together support both conservation and environmental…

In this educational initiative, we suggest to build a real model of solar village inside the school, which uses only solar energy. These educational initiatives emphasize the importance of energy for a technological society and the advantage of alternative energy sources. In this scientific educational initiative, the pupils in three elementary…

The Caltech Energy Conservation Investment Program (CECIP) was initiated in 2009. It manages $8 million within an existing fund in the school's endowment, which had been created to finance capital projects. Any member of the Caltech community may submit a project proposal, and projects are considered for approval as long as they have at least a 15…

Western Michigan University has designed an innovative "Quasi-Revolving Fund" model that demonstrates the institution's full commitment to incorporating sustainability into campus operations. The Quasi-Revolving Fund recaptures money from cost-savings, similar to a typical green revolving fund, but it also sources capital from the…

The $3 million Live Green Revolving Loan Fund (LGRLF) at Iowa State University (ISU) was launched in 2008. The LGRLF is unique in its decentralized implementation structure which allows each department and building to reap the benefits of their own efficiency measures and gives individual departments the incentive to propose resource-saving…

Just 19 months after the start of design, Stoddert Elementary School's modernized and expanded campus in northwest Washington, DC reopened, welcoming back the school and its community. Featuring spaces that had been missing since the school was founded in 1932, such as a gym, cafeteria, and library/media center and up-to-date building systems and…

Colleges and universities have been among the leaders nationwide in adopting green initiatives, partly due to their demographics, but also because they are facing their own budget pressures. Virtualization has become the poster child of many schools' efforts, because it provides significant bang for the buck. However, more and more higher…

It has been 41 years since the late Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson launched the first nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment, known as Earth Day. The event was a national "teach-in" about environmental causes, and it is widely considered the spark that ignited the modern environmental education movement. Within months,…

In the world of higher education, even the most ambitious sustainability plans often begin with tiny steps taken by individual departments. Michael Crowley, a program manager for Environmental Health & Engineering (EH&E) and former assistant director of the Harvard (Massachusetts) Green Campus Initiative, explains that going for small wins through…