PUTNAM VALLEY – When it comes to a commitment for sustainable energy, the Putnam Valley School District leads the pack with geothermal heating and cooling.
The Building Power Resource Center, a national resource hub providing information to utilize federal funds for climate policies in buildings and the power sector, has issued a report praising the school district for its geothermal systems and rooftop solar panels that by 2028 will result in Putnam Valley becoming one of the only, if not the only, school district in the nation with 100 percent geothermal heating and cooling in all buildings achieving zero oil use district wide.
On Monday Superintendent Jeremy Luft traced the history of the energy saving.
In 1998, using an energy performance contract, the Putnam Valley Middle School converted from a fully electric heating system to geothermal heating and cooling.
In 2000, the district’s high school was completed that also contained geothermal heating and cooling.
The 91-year-old Putnam Valley Elementary School is currently converting to ground source heating and cooling. Under a 2019 energy performance contract, approximately one-third of the school was converted to geothermal heating and cooling. The remaining two-thirds of the elementary school will be converted as part of an approved capital project by 2027, eliminating oil use completely for the district’s buildings.
Luft noted that geothermal cost savings stand out because of its efforts to quantify the fiscal cost and benefits of its shift to renewable energy over the last 25 years.
David Spittal, the district’s Director of Operations, assessed the annual cost savings for the middle school by looking at the avoided cost of purchasing oil.
According to Spittal, the middle school, which dates from 1972, and the 1935 elementary school have the same approximate square footage. Had the school district not converted to geothermal, it would have borne additional costs for the middle school roughly equal to the cost that the elementary school had paid for oil until it started its conversion to geothermal in 2019. From the 2002–2003 school year through the 2018 2019 school year when the district started to convert part of the elementary school to geothermal, the district spent just under $1.5 million on oil for the elementary school. The district estimates that its 1998 investment in geothermal for the middle school avoided an additional $1.5 million in cost that it would have spent to heat that building as well.
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