High-Performance Schools with John Balfe from NEEP
Description
Featuring
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</figure>John Balfe, Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP)
John works on the Buildings Team at NEEP to help drive energy efficiency in new and retrofitted schools and public buildings throughout the region. John works with the various stakeholders in the industry to advance public policy with high-performance building standards in the region, including facilitation of information exchange and knowledge transfer between states and programs. Prior to joining NEEP in 2015, John interned at the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission located in Manchester, NH. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2014 with a BS in Community and Environmental Planning.
Air quality, acoustics, and thermal comfort are just some of the critical elements to consider when assessing the indoor environmental quality of a building. But how are these characteristics measured in schools, and what programs do we have to ensure they are being prioritized?
Joining us for this episode is John Balfe from Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP). John discusses the key components to a high-performance school, as well as the programs and standards that are being implemented to help ensure the development of healthy academic environments.
Episode Information & Resources
- This is the criteria for the design of high performance schools focused on indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency, and ongoing operations.
CAPEE (Community Action Planning for Energy Efficiency)
- This tool is for communities to help stakeholders plan and prioritize energy efficiency projects at the local level.
NEEP’s High Performance Schools Webpage
- This includes links to other relevant info and case studies for high performance schools.
- Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up on the latest from NEEP.
Blog: SWA’s Top 10 Tips for a Healthier Indoor Environment
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About Buildings and Beyond
Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.
Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.
Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby
Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello
Episode Transcript
Kelly: (00:06 )
welcome to buildings and beyond
Robb: (00:09 )
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment
Kelly: (00:14 )
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.
Robb: (00:18 )
I’m Rob Aldrich
New Speaker: (00:19 )
and I’m Kelly Westby.
New Speaker: (00:21 )
This week I talked with John Balfe from NEEP- Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, and John works a lot with school buildings, high performance schools. There’s an organization called CHPS C-H-P-S collaborative for high performance schools, which offers guidance and also certification for schools all over the country. And NEEP, John’s organization, manages the northeast regional version of CHPS, for folks in the northeast and the mid-Atlantic. I do want to say that the website CHPS.net Is the proper website. A couple of times in the episode, I think I say chps.org. That is incorrect. It’s all correct in the show notes. So here’s an interview with John Balfe.
Robb: (01:12 )
All right. High performance schools. First of all, did you go to a high performance school?
John: (01:18 )
I did not. Well, my high school was decent, but it wasn’t built to any criteria. My old elementary school recently got knocked down and renovated and it is now a high performance school, it’s a CHP school. So it was kind of cool to see. And I actually went back and did a case study on it. So that was kind of cool.
Robb: (01:38 )
Cool, where was it?
John: (01:38 )
It in Middleton, Massachusetts. Yeah, it’s a lot better than when I went there, that’s for sure.
Robb: (01:45 )
Yeah, I was thinking about that when we are kind of prepping for this call, I was thinking back on my school and it was, you know, I think it was built in the fifties or something, it was before I was born. And the one thing I remember when I was thinking about it, it was just the heat. You know, if you go back to school in September, you can get a heat wave in September. This was also in Massachusetts and I remember it just being stifling in classrooms. That’s not a good place to learn. So when we’re talking about high performance schools, the first thing that comes to mind, for me, is indoor air quality. Is that a big pillar of CHPs and of these programs?
John: (02:27 )
Yeah, I think indoor air quality, and we kind of even broaden it a little bit further than that to the indoor environmental quality, so things like acoustics, air quality, thermal comfort of the building are kind of the key components of indoor environmental quality. There all really important because, you know, if a student’s sitting in the back of the class and the HVAC equipment comes on and it’s really loud and distracting, you know, that kid in the back of the class might not be hearing what the teacher is saying. And that can be really difficult. You know, not a great learning environment. I like to always say that there’s three main pillars, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, really. So, you know, it’s an energy efficient building and reduces the impact on the environment around us. So to me, those are the big, the big three things that high performance
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