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Labor Day marks the psychological end of summer, and as “Back to School” sets in for the Fall 2009 semester, educators across the country are facing very difficult budgetary challenges.
As just one example of the dire nature of the situation in Pennsylvania, school officials in Pottstown, Pa., are considering closing an elementary school mid-year to save money due to state budget woes.
"People have to wake up about what this is doing to education. You want to hear people howl, wait until (word gets out that) we're going to close a school and eliminate art, music and sports," Pottstown School Board Vice President Robert Hartman, Jr., told The Daily Local News.
One private sector company, LED Saving Solutions focuses on cost containment by offering $100 Million in LED lighting retrofits at zero out-of-pocket expense to over 100 grade school, high school, and colleges across the United States. To date, energy efficiency has been largely left out of the education debate, but 22 percent or more of a school’s electricity costs typically go toward lighting. LED (light emitting diode) lighting reduces electricity costs by 80 percent, which adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year for education. This can keep the lights on in the classrooms as well as the books in the hands of the students.
LED Saving Solutions is pleased to offer the $100 Million LED Lighting incentive to help make education more affordable for Americans. This offer is for the first 100 major schools or school districts that request up to $1 million each in state-of-the-art lighting at zero out-of-pocket expense to each school. The offer includes the free lighting energy audit, free retrofit bulb installation, at zero cost to the schools and taxpayers. With this program, LED Savings Solutions only receives compensation on a portion of the actual metered kilowatt savings results.
The program will generate about $500,000 annual net cash-flow savings for each school or school district that currently spends more than $1 million a year on lighting.
For schools, this program is designed for seven years with the option for the administrators to roll over and continue saving money for incremental terms. As the bulbs last 50,000-70,000 hours at a burn rate of 2,000 hours per year (50 hours per week x 40 weeks), the bulbs can last over 25 years. With $500,000 in savings over the life of the bulbs, the total savings per school is $3.5 million. With 100 schools engaged in the program, the savings is collectively over $350 million. Tax incentives and reduced maintenance costs of switching out bulbs also add to the bottom line in the first year and then year over year. Since each $1 saved in electricity translates into about 10 lbs of reduced CO2 emissions, the environmental benefit is enormous with savings to be realized at 3.5 billion lbs of greenhouse gases.
“When we saw the economic hardships facing schools in our own state, we did the research and quickly realized that the problems were not isolated to Pennsylvania. So, this national initiative is about engaging with cash-strapped but forward-thinking schools that want to take part in the LED lighting revolution that will save money and the planet,” explained Charlie Szoradi, LEED AP and President of GREENandSAVE LLC, the parent company of LED Saving Solutions.
To execute on this program, LED Saving Solutions recently established ground-breaking production and financing relationships that reduce up-front costs to $0 for participants. Through collective strategic partnerships, the company literally takes all of the risk in replacing the bulbs and only gets paid on a portion of the savings results each month. By extending savings on to schools each month, the program is cash-flow positive from the start. LED Saving Solutions’ team of architects, lighting professionals, certified energy auditors, LEED-accredited professionals, mechanical engineers, and researchers simply focus on performance. With over seven major manufacturers participating in this LED Savings Share program, the “best of breed” LED products can retrofit any interior or exterior fixture, and take a small step toward making school operating costs more affordable.
***For more information about this program, contact Andy Horning at 484-892-1934.
