ORANGE — A six-figure award from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is supporting major upgrades to Ralph C. Mahar Regional School’s ventilation system and helping to eliminate the school’s oil usage, a change that brought MassCEC officials to Orange on Monday for a tour.
Ian Spencer, Mahar’s facilities director since 2021, explained the $524,000 from MassCEC’s Green School Works program enables Mahar to replace 24 unit ventilators with high-efficiency ones equipped with integrated heat pumps and demand-based ventilation controls, as well as swap a 600-gallon, oil-fired domestic hot water system with five 120-gallon air source heat pump water heaters.
Jennifer Le Blond, MassCEC’s interim CEO, said the Green School Works program’s money helps provide clean air and plenty of ventilation, and builds strong modern infrastructure.
“The Green School Works program really exists to make sure that modernization is easier for our communities,” she said.
Those in attendance included state Sen. Jo Comerford, state Rep. Susannah Whipps, Mahar Superintendent Elizabeth Zielinski, Mahar School Committee Chair Peter Cross and Principal Scott Hemlin. Comerford mentioned projects like this would not be possible without the MassCEC.
Seventeen new ventilators have been installed at this point, and Spencer brought guests to a few classrooms to view new and old models before a trip to the boiler room, where the new heat pump water heaters will consume excess heat that normally goes to waste, and take advantage of that heat to warm the water.
This project is a phased one, and Spencer previously said the goal is to have the projects completed by September 2026. The school will no longer use oil once the project is completed, though there will still be some propane use on site.
Spencer explained Mahar was renovated in 2004 and 2005, but heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems have a roughly 20-year lifespan.
While the projects’ total cost is about $700,000, Spencer previously said the difference will be covered by rebates from National Grid.
The Green School Works program provides implementation grants for capital projects with a focus on existing school buildings and low-income communities. Massachusetts has approximately 1,800 public school buildings that are responsible for 880,000 metric tons of carbon every year, according to the MassCEC, and at least 50% of those were built before 1970. As a result, school districts struggle with financial and technical barriers to building decarbonization. The program also provides technical assistance to incorporate energy efficiency, resilience and sustainability into capital planning.
Key partners in the program are the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the state Department of Energy Resources, Mass Save, and the Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience.
All participating schools must be public, K-12 learning institutions in Massachusetts. This includes public K-12 charter schools, regional vocational technical schools and educational collaboratives. As part of the Green School Works program, up to $19 million is available for school building modernization projects that improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions or mitigate climate change’s impacts.