When Warren County Public Schools facility executive Christopher McIntyre heard about a colleague’s high ranking among Kentucky school districts in energy efficiency, he needed to know more. At the time of the conversation, McIntyre’s district was ranked 16th, and his colleague’s district was third.
“I called him and said, ‘How in the heck are you doing it?’” recalls McIntyre, the CFO/COO/treasurer and construction supervisor for the district. “He led me down the path of an ESCO.”
Energy service companies (ESCOs) can help school districts accomplish their energy conservation goals. When districts like Warren County enter an energy savings agreement, the ESCO can help develop a long-term energy savings plan through a series of projects.
For Warren County, a fast-growing school district already on a solid energy saving path, an ESCO program established in 2017 took the district to another level.
Warren County Public Schools (WCPS) is the fourth largest district in Kentucky, and the state’s fastest growing district, adding an average of 450 students each year. Based in Bowling Green, the state’s third-largest city with 140,000 residents, and looking at a projected growth of 90,000 residents over the next 25 years, maintaining high-performing schools is essential to the community’s continual growth.
“There’s only two or three of us in the state that are growing 100 plus kids a year,” McIntyre says. “Some of the largest districts have plateaued or even have a negative enrollment. We’ve got to drive the perception that public education is going in a different direction than what we’re seeing nationwide. And that starts with our school buildings.”
With Western Kentucky University located in Bowling Green and larger cities like Nashville and Louisville short drives away, Bowling Green is an appealing place for families to settle down. For McIntyre, building presentation and performance is an important part of the academic puzzle.
“If you pull up to a school and the weeds are grown up or the grass is barely cut, and the building looks like it hasn’t been painted in 30 years and the playground equipment is falling apart, they’re going to keep driving,” he says. “I don’t want to put my kids in that school. Internally, they could have the best educators in the world and be top performing, but people will never get to the interior of that building because they see what’s on the outside.”
The school district has had a history of operating energy-efficient buildings since 2003. WCPS has had buildings have been operating on geothermal energy systems for more than 40 years. Two schools became the first Energy Star certified schools in Kentucky in 2003 and the district introduced the first school in the state built with insulated concrete form walls in 2005. WCPS opened the first zero-energy school in the United States in 2009.
With enrollment continuing to increase, McIntyre, a lifelong resident with children attending the district's schools, was determined to vault the district into the state’s top energy performer. He has been fortunate to have a supportive school board behind him, which is not always the case in some districts where finding money might not be so easy.
“It’s ingrained in the board’s mentality,” McIntyre told a crowd gathered at the annual National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO) conference in November 2024 when speaking about high-performing buildings. “I told the board if our job is to challenge kids to learn something new and to push the envelope, then as adults, should we not set the example for them?”
When a school district approaches an ESCO about entering an agreement, it’s people like Chad Riggs, a partner at CMTA, an engineering design and performance contracting firm located in Louisville, who help steer them through the process.
“Typically, the conversation starts with, what is performance contracting, how does it work?” he says. “And then, it’s discussing benefits over traditional methods, and real-life case studies. We talk about the case study from Warren County a lot because it resonates with a lot of people, what was able to be accomplished there and how they funded it.”
CMTA and WCPS entered a 20-year partnership in 2017 with a energy savings performance contract (ESPC) worth about $30 million. The projects involved in the contract covered energy upgrades at 28 of the district’s 30 buildings. The projects addressed 2.35 million square feet of instructional space and included HVAC system upgrades in six schools.
Funding for the project was gathered through securing several sources including bonds, capital funds and grants in a process called “stacking,” another aspect of projects that ESCOs can help districts with.
Many school districts lack the capacity to maximize all the different financing options to close funding gaps, causing stress among staff members.
“Funding stacking can exhaust a school staff — applying to this, applying to that, putting this in, being creative, bringing in this stakeholder or that stakeholder. They just don’t have the staff because of so many different competing priorities,” says Reilly Loveland, associate director for the New Buildings Institute.
Other common stacking methods can include state matching funds, utility incentives, low-interest loans and power purchase agreements.
“ESCOs can guide school districts through the process, because (some districts) don’t have tax advisors, or people who know about energy storage,” says Phoebe Beierle, senior manager of programs with the Center for Green Schools and the U.S. Green Building Council. “There’s a ton of money out there. Applying for it is super complicated, and all these entities have money for all these different projects.”
WCPS made the most of the early stages of its ESPC with CMTA, completing a number of large projects in a three-year period ending in 2020.
Other projects included one roof replacement, window replacements at three schools and a new dehumidification unit at the aquatic center that enters an energy-saving mode after the automatic pool cover closes.
In addition to helping identify and execute energy-saving projects, ESCOs can also help districts promote their savings and tell their success stories.
CMTA developed a dashboard for the district to highlight improvements made within the larger project. The dashboard includes a 360-degree view of mechanical rooms before and after the project aimed at educating users about how the new equipment operates. Billing information is also provided to provide users with a look at how consumption rates meet the building’s baseline or target energy goals.
The energy savings in the district from the project were immediate. According to CMTA, the total cost savings achieved by WCPS during the first year of the contract saved $1.2 million and included $372,000 in excess savings that was beyond the guarantee of $840,000 in the first year of the contract.
The district’s energy savings achieved are also reflected in its energy use intensity (EUI) numbers. Prior to the performance contract, WCPS operated at a EUI of 40.8. A recent measure dropped the school to 24.2, a 41 percent decrease in energy use and the spot as the most energy efficient district in Kentucky.
The financial savings helped add to the district’s capital funding account for new construction projects. That is noteworthy as McIntyre says he currently has eight projects in the development process ranging in stages from planning, moving dirt, or close to finishing. He credits the county’s and district’s ability to work together and see the big picture as a reason why WCPS is thriving today.
“The board has a lot of trust in me, and I have a lot of trust in the group that I’ve assembled around me,” McIntyre says. “If we didn’t have that relationship, peace and trust with each other, we wouldn’t be above most districts.”
While some CMTA clients focus on smaller projects with their ESCO agreements, WCPS went all in on an investment that should pay off for decades.
“All the things you can accomplish go above and beyond just lighting or controls,” Riggs says. “You’re able to solve holistic problems and prepare these buildings for the next 30 years. With all that was accomplished at Warren County, you can start seeing the benefits of performance contracting and realize not just simple, low-hanging fruit anymore.”
Dave Lubach is executive editor of the facilities market. He has more than nine years of experience covering facility management and maintenance issues.
