In 2008, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Energy Efficient Schools Initiative, which provides funds to schools for energy-efficient projects. At that time, a 12-member energy-efficient schools council was tasked with approving technical guidelines for schools, creating incentive levels and energy management programs. The council also hired Ron Graham as the executive director of EESI.

“They had hired a consultant who had worked on a similar program in New York State to provide funds for energy efficiencies, so they pretty much knew how they wanted to proceed when they hired me in June 2009,” Graham says. “And in August 2009, we started making the first incentive grants.”

With $90 million dollars considered excess lottery funds, $20.8 million was to be distributed equally among all 136 public school districts throughout the state.

“We are not spending any tax dollars in this initiative at all,” he says. “People play the lottery wanting something better for themselves, but there is a lot of savings in tax dollars now because of it.”

The incentive grants distributed were based on $22 per student, so the larger the district, the bigger the grant.

“Other states are in the same position and there are just not extra dollars to spend,” Graham says. “A lot of the purchasing practices in schools have been to go with the lowest bid, which means when they are buying a piece of equipment, you can have the lower cost by having a less efficient unit. Now it wouldn’t be a prudent decision of a school board to choose the lowest cost because they are losing money they had available in the form of a grant.”

The rest of the money was set aside to provide low-interest loans to districts to offset the cost of energy efficiency projects such as installing new HVAC units or replacing outdated lighting systems. To date, the council has have approved $67.3 million in loan projects across the state, with $50.6 already fully executed. Districts benefit by having more options up front for improvements and the children benefit by getting a better school.

“I am very proud of the efforts of the council and the school districts for participating,” he says. “They are improving their learning environment. Better lighting, more comfortable temperature from an improved HVAC, all those improvements have been shown to increase test scores.”

Davidson County was awarded $1.59 million in grant dollars for a large lighting project, $1.1 of which has already been reimbursed, Graham says.

Schools taking advantage of the program also will see a benefit when it comes to cutting the bottom line further down the road.

“Their utility bills are reduced and those monies can go somewhere else,” Graham says. “When you think about having to make cuts by reducing teachers, instead they can reduce their bill and save those dollars. It is one of the few places you can make cuts and it is a positive thing.”

In fact, he hopes some of the lessons learned are being taken up at home. “It makes sense for everybody in these tough economic times to be more efficient with your use of energy and allow you to have money for food, gas and all the other things we need right now.”