ENERGY AND ASSOCIATED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF THE DRAFT HIGH PERFORMANCE SCHOOL RATING SYSTEM

摘要

Massachusetts is currently in the process of finalizing an indigenous high performance schools rating system (MA-CHPS), through which school buildings would be rated according to their environmental attributes in six different areas: site, water, energy, materials, indoor environmental quality and policy and operations. This study represents an attempt to quantify the energy and the associated emissions impacts of nine credits in the MA-CHPS rating system, and investigate the relationship between the energy impacts of these credits and the points scored for achieving them. No apparent correlation between the number of points earned and the energy saved was observed. If a representative school of 340,000 square feet in suburban Boston, Massachusetts, had implemented all the credits quantified in this study, the cumulative energy savings would have been almost 65% above on-site energy efficiency measures only.