Originally published on RMI Outlet.
By Laurie Guevara-Stone
By Laurie Guevara-Stone
Talk
of building energy-efficiency retrofits usually focuses on commercial
offices. But there’s another type of building—prisons—where the
non-energy benefits of those retrofits really stand out in stark relief.
True to their name, deep energy retrofits generate a suite of deep retrofit values
that are quantifiable and go well beyond straightforward energy cost
savings, such as rents, sales and lease-up rates, employee health and
productivity, and more.
In office environments, the beyond-energy-cost value-add of deep
retrofits is subtler, but prisons are a world of extreme contrasts where
we can more plainly see the impact of deep retrofit value. Like energy-intensive building types such as healthcare facilities
and food service establishments, prisons consume higher-than-average
amounts of energy per square foot. Retail stores use an average 114 kBtu
per square foot, the average office building uses 148, and your average
prison uses about 170. And, of course, many prisons aren’t exactly
designed with occupant comfort in mind.
But the prisons that are overhauled for energy efficiency and other
so-called “green” features are becoming a powerful demonstration of the
difference between doing hard time and doing rehabilitative time. That
difference, in a very real sense, is the deep retrofit value about which
we’ve written before.
REAPING ENERGY COST SAVINGS
Correctional facilities costing taxpayers an estimated $63.4 billion a year. And a 2010 study showed that the average prison spends $36,000 per month
on energy. Prisons have historically been built with security in mind,
and not much thought put into efficient lighting, heating, or cooling.
But that is starting to change.
In 2008, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation saved over $3 million
through energy retrofits of 13 of the state’s prisons. The retrofits
included lighting, HVAC, kitchen equipment, and laundry upgrades. Coyote
Ridge Prison in Washington, D.C., the first correctional facility to
achieve LEED Gold certification, uses energy-efficient boilers, natural
ventilation, and passive heating, cutting its energy usage in half.
Constellation Energy was recently awarded a $45 million contract
to implement energy-efficiency measures and install a 2 megawatt (MW)
solar system at a Federal Correctional Complex in Florida. The project
is expected to save the Federal Bureau of Prisons $79 million in energy
costs and 323,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 19
years.
REALIZING THE HUMAN SIDE OF GREEN BUILDING
Yet saving money isn’t the only reason to build or retrofit prisons
to be environmentally friendly. Just as RMI has shown in other
commercial properties, “greening” up prisons provides value beyond energy cost savings alone. Studies have shown that inmates with views of natural settings had lower health complaints
and fewer stress-related physical symptoms than inmates without natural
views. Introducing daylight into prisons has been shown to not only
save on lighting costs, but to also create a humane environment that can reduce aggressiveness.
BWBR Architects built a 416-bed inmate housing unit for the Minnesota Correctional Facility.
In addition to incorporating energy-efficient technologies such as
light sensors, an air-to-air heat recovery unit, an instantaneous
steam-to-hot water system, and high-efficiency motors, the design team
put effort into choosing materials and details that help reduce tension,
including installing clerestory windows to help filter in natural
light. “When we decide people are less than human, and design as though
they are less than human, we don’t give them much of a chance for
improving themselves as human beings,” wrote Melania Baumhover,
project manager for BWBR. “It’s not about thicker walls, more steel,
and more isolated rooms. It means designing spaces that are light filled
and open.”
A U.S. Department of Justice report describing the benefits of greening prisons states,
“Facilities designed for the incarcerated should be planned and
designed with outcomes in mind. While materials and treatments will
differ from mainstream buildings because of budget and security, the
same care for scale, humane materials, healthy environment, and all of
the metrics of energy efficiency should apply in equal measure.”
One of the best examples of gaining value beyond energy cost savings is seen in Norway’s minimum-security Bastoy prison,
often called the first ecological prison in the world. Bastoy is
powered by solar panels, heated by burning local wood waste, grows all
its own food using organic fertilizers and biofuel-powered tractors, and
recycles everything it can. It also has the lowest operating costs of any prison in Norway and a lower recidivism rate.
GREEN JOB TRAINING
Incorporating energy-efficient technologies and renewable energy
systems into prisons can also help bring about green job training
opportunities. While many prisons have long offered education and
vocational training programs, the growth of the green economy is opening
new opportunities. Many prisons have large amounts of land in which
solar panels or wind turbines can be installed. For example, the Ross
Correctional Institution in Ohio has a 400-panel solar thermal system
that saves taxpayers $245,000 in energy costs a year. But perhaps even
more important, the inmates installed the system themselves
after a rigorous training program. One of the inmate installers was
offered a job by the installation company after he got out of prison.
The Virginia Department of Corrections has worked with Johnson
Controls to retrofit over 20 correctional facilities with lighting and
HVAC upgrades. Besides saving energy and money, they are using the
systems to run a Green HVAC Vocational Program.
“Through educational programs like this we can improve public safety
and reduce recidivism by providing offenders with marketable skills for
when they are released back into their communities,” Marla Graff Decker,
secretary of public safety, stated in a press release about the program.
Greening up prisons is a win-win-win situation for taxpayers, the
environment, and society at large, not to mention the inmates themselves
and others who spend significant amounts of time within the walls of a
facility. Morris Thigpen, director of the National Institute of
Corrections, wrote in The Greening of Corrections, “We believe
the path to sustainability is not only technically feasible for
correctional facilities but also critical as it allows us to reduce our
costs of doing business, assist in making our communities more
sustainable, help our inmates reintegrate into society in a productive
and meaningful way, and ultimately, ensure that we are preserving our
environment now and for generations to come.”
In the end, as much as they save energy and cost, deep energy
retrofits are as much or more about the people that occupy a space, than
they are about the energy that space consumes. Nowhere is that
distinction more apparent than in the prison system, but lessons from
there can translate across to offices, homes, and numerous other
buildings, where we can see the great value that deep energy retrofits
generate.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/06/01/green-prisons-deep-energy-retrofits-deliver-value-beyond-energy-savings/