The Lycée works with , an energy savings company, to help us better monitor our energy usage. Through the use of digital energy dashboards, our facilities teams (and students!) are able to analyze past and current energy usage to determine any recurring trends and create innovative strategies to reduce energy use.
The Lycée purchases Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from Sterling Planet. Our REC purchase has both local and global environmental benefits, helping use emit almost no regional air pollution or ozone-forming CO2s. PDF Certificate
To reduce water waste, we utilize low-flow bathroom plumbing fixtures and have installed a water meter to the HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) cooling towers for improved optimization and real-time display of actual use.
The building is designed to bring in abundant natural sunlight, which helps us reduce dependency on electrical lights as well as keeps the building warm during cold winter season.. Heating and electrical lighting typically represent the largest proportion of energy demand for schools, and the use of “free” heating and lighting from the sun helps reduce the generation of greenhouse gas from fossil-fuel based energy production.
As of 2016, we use LED lighting (light-emitting diode) in offices and classrooms with advanced motion activation. To keep increasing our electrical efficiency, our maintenance team installed local controllers in common areas that schedule the lighting according to our occupancy.
We installed a wind turbine on the York Wing rooftop, a gift of the Class of 2013, producing 1.5kW.
We now have a solar array on the 6th-floor Primary rooftop! On any given sunny day, it creates about 3.5kW of renewable energy. Fun Fact: Both the solar and wind installations can generate a max 5KW, enough energy to power 2-3 classrooms.