First Net-Zero School Building Helps Teach Students Value of Sustainability

The Putney School, a private high school in rural Vermont, has quietly staked its claim to the first and only net-zero, Platinum LEED certified school building in the country. The simple appearance of the school’s new – and much needed – field house belies not only some of the most innovative sustainable building design, but also represents a major step forward for the school – a mission founder Camelita Hinton began back in 1935. Simply put, to make each generation better than the last.

The story of the new net-zero field house is two-fold. First, there’s the building itself, and then the philosophy, vision, and work that brought it to fruition.

Net-zero in Vermont

Early in process, it was decided to design “tiers of performance above code” for the new field house, Putney CFO Randy Smith told me in a recent interview. What emerged from that initial idea is one of the few buildings in the country that produces more energy than it consumes – and then some. Local utility Green Mountain Energy pays 13 cents, plus a 6 cent premium, for each kilowatt of energy Putney provides back to the grid. Electricity is supplied by a 36.8 kilowatt array of solar-tracking PV solar panels. “It’s an electric building,” Smith says, “it uses no carbon based fuel.”

The field house began operation in late 2009, and in its fifteen months of operation, has proven the success of the design . In addition to being net-zero energy building, the 16,500-square-foot structure incorporates a number of low-impact design features including:

• Passive solar heating
• “On occupancy” lighting and ventilation systems, combined with extensive daylighting CO2 sensors.
• A white reflective roof
• A “super-insulated” building envelop utilizing R20 under-slab insulation, R20 foundation wall insulation, R45 walls, R60 roofs, and R5 fiberglass windows.
• Locally harvested construction materials
• Storm water management that exceeds national standards for runoff capture and treatment.

The field house demonstrates the efficacy of the net-zero design, and helps point the way toward future development at Putney. The lessons learned from the project are fundamental for the school’s long range plans “as we move more toward net-zero” explains Smith. The data gleaned from the field house helps Putney become “renewable ready as we move from the uncertainty of the oil market,” Smith said. Even with the field house producing its own energy, the rest of the school takes power from the grid. Energy costs for 2010 were upwards of $450,000.

Sustainability is more than a building

Sustainability is a term often used, abused and misunderstood. So even if it sounds like a cliche, at Putney “sustainability” is an ingrained way of life for students, where every kid has a job in addition to a full range of academic, artistic, and physical education programs.

One of student Natalie Silver’s responsibilities is overseeing the morning and evening barn crew. All students share in helping  run the working farm at Putney, an operation that contributes 35 percent of the food served in the cafeteria. Working to produce your own food helps bring an ecological awareness. Want to learn where food actually comes from? Go milk a cow.

Physical activity and sports is a core component of the program at Putney. For Natalie – whose athletic abilities include lacrosse, cross-country skiing, and soccer – and her fellow students, a field house had long been sorely needed to support and expand those athletic and community programs.

Putney is founded on a model of progressive education originally developed by American philosopher and educator John Dewey. It emphasizes “experiential education,” requiring students to “struggle with the real dilemmas of crafting a community in which rights and responsibilities balance.” Something Putney calls “the hard stretching of oneself.”

Inherent to that community responsibility was direct student involvement with the field house project. Natalie and her fellow students engaged with the surrounding community and alumni across the country to help rally support and raise the $5.5 million to fund the project. Students were also encouraged to give their input in the buildings design, offering suggestions that architect Maclay Architects incorporated into the final plans for the field house.

Natalie’s primary interest was a proper field house where she could pursue her athletic interests and hang out with her fellow students – not necessarily that it be net-zero and LEED Platinum certified building. Even so, it seemed only natural to everyone at Putney that any new building should live lightly on the land.

“I hear sustainability mentioned ten times a day,” Natalie told me. But not as a gripe, just as part of the daily routine at Putney. From the “sustainability squads” in the dorm rooms and helping run a farm, to direct involvement with the planning and design of a net-zero building, students are imbued with a sense of environmental and community responsibility.

And that is what is most heartening for me in this story. Sustainability comes not primarily from the buildings we build – though sustainable building design is an essential component – but from the people that inhabit those buildings. Net-zero should not be something we write about as exceptional, but something mundane, as a matter of course.

The new field house at Putney, and other buildings like it, prove that we can. And once built they demonstrate both economic and and environmental sustainability. So why wouldn’t we build net-zero buildings? It only makes sense.