School GHP Opportunities in Virginia

Virginia has 1,930 schools and centers, with a total K-12 enrollment of 1.46 million students. The February 2002 Review of Elementary and Secondary School Funding by the Joint Legislative Review and Audit Commission of the Virginia General Assembly reports that 27% of our state’s school buildings are over 40 years old. Since the average life of a school building is in the range of 40 to 50 years, about a quarter of Virginia's school buildings will need major renovation over the next decade. These represent important opportunities to replace outdated heating and cooling equipment with geothermal heat pumps -- possibly 40 to 50 GHP retrofit opportunities each year, perhaps more, since mechanical equipment life is typically half that of the building.

From 1999 to 2001, the rate of school construction in Virginia ranged from 24 to 27 new schools annually, about half of these being elementary schools. K-12 student enrollment in Virginia is expected to increase by 39,000 over the next five years, suggesting that there will continue to be 20 to 30 GHP new school opportunities each year, in addition to the above retrofit opportunities.

This is the part of our Web site where you personally can get involved in helping to identify and develop GHP opportunities in your community's plans to renovate existing schools or build new schools. It provides guidance on connecting local stakeholders to each other and to the additional resources they might need to help develop a successful GHP project. It also provides resource materials that stakeholders can use to promote the GHP alternative at appropriate stages in the school capital planning process.

On the Exploring Opportunities page, learn how to find out about school renovation and new school construction projects in your your community, and how to contact the various local stakeholders involved in school capital planning. You and other interested stakeholders can then use our on-line discussion forum to collaborate in exploring GHP opportunities within your school division's capital improvement program (CIP). We also provide a downloadable screening tool that your team can use to evaluate the economic feasibility of different GHP opportunities.

Once a promising GHP opportunity has been identified in the CIP, our Project Development page provides guidance on how to ensure that the GHP alternative is included in the bid package that a school division issues when requesting proposals for architecture and engineering services associated with that particular CIP project. Our page on Overcoming Hurdles explains different financing alternatives to cover the capital cost of the GHP system, and provides guidance on ensuring proper conditioning of ventilation air and minimizing ground loop costs, which are two other common concerns with GHP systems.