Public school board working hard to reduce its carbon footprint

News Release
RRDSB

The Rainy River District School Board has a variety of initiatives in place to help promote environmental responsibility and a more sustainable future.
The Board recognizes that it is important to practice the environmentally responsible values being taught to students through our various Environmental Education programs. To this end, the Rainy River District School Board has undertaken several initiatives to become more environmentally friendly.
These initiatives have two primary focuses: consuming less energy and providing environmentally friendly power back to the grid from solar panels located on school facilities.
The biggest step the Board has taken is a multi-phased energy and facility renewal at our school facilities. This renewal includes upgrades to heating and cooling systems and controls making our facilities more energy efficient. In addition, the Board is also looking to reduce power consumption from its computer servers and has undertaken virtualization - placing multiple virtual machines on one physical machine - to save on power consumption and reduce the facility demands for cooling, since all power used is exhausted as waste heat.
In an exciting development, the Board has also secured funding to place photovoltaic cells (solar panels) on the roofs of J.W. Walker School and Fort Frances High School. The projects will produce a fairly significant amount of power, especially at Fort Frances High School, where approximately 116 kilowatts of power at capacity will be produced. This power will be then put back into the grid to generate revenue for the School Board, which can be reinvested into student focused activities. Another interesting feature of the project is that, through a reporting system, students will have the opportunity to learn firsthand about the benefits of “green power,” using live data.
“From an environmental standpoint, the biggest difference we can make as a Board is to operate our facilities in the most energy efficient manner possible. Our energy and facility renewal project is a prime example of paying close attention to the impact that proper design and planning have on energy usage,” said Raymond Roy, Manager, Plant
Operations and Maintenance. “In practical terms, going green also makes financial sense - it simply costs less to use less energy. We are also very proud of the green energy projects we’ve developed since they will add a fairly significant amount of power to the grid and produce a fair amount of revenue for the Board.”
The Rainy River District School Board will continue to focus on ways in which it can become more environmentally responsible and show our students by example, the importance of taking steps today to ensure a sustainable future.