The Oak Park and River Forest District 200 Board of Education has given the go ahead to install a geothermal heating and cooling system for the new portion of the school that will be built over the next two years.
In a unanimous vote, the school board approved the scope for a geothermal heating and cooling system for the new Project 2 space that is projected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 442,500 pounds each year compared with a natural gas system. The annual reduction in carbon emissions is equivalent to the annual emissions of a car driven about 500,000 miles in year, according to report prepared by the company that OPRF will contact to install the geothermal system. The annual energy savings for OPRF is projected to be 18% annually over a conventional natural gas boiler-based system.
The geothermal system is projected to cost about $10.3 million, although the exact cost won’t be known until OPRF hammers out a contract with Phoenix based Veregy, a leading provider of energy efficient solutions. The initial cost is projected to be offset by receiving $7.3 million in government grants under the Federal Inflation Reduction Act and $6 million in reduced energy costs over 30 years.
“The total economics of this project are actually in our favor,” said school board member Graham Brisben before the vote, noting the life cycle costs of the geothermal project are projected to be nearly $350,000 less annually than a natural gas-based system.
About 240 wells will be dug to a depth of 500 feet under the football field at Oak Park Stadium. The wells are projected to provide 606 tons of total capacity, a little bit more than needed to heat and cool the new Project 2 space because the soil under the football field has very good conductivity. Heat pumps will transfer the air from deep underground into the building to provide heating in winter and cooling in summer as the temperature below ground remains much more stable than the temperature above ground. The artificial turf of the football field will be removed to dig the new wells and then a new turf field will be installed after the wells are dug.
During the public comment portion of the Jan. 25 school board meeting, four people, including OPRF student Katie Stabb, who attended the United Nations Climate Change Convention with some peers last November, urged the school board to approve the geothermal project. After the scope of the geothermal project was approved one of those speakers, Macey Majkrzak, a member of the Oak Park Climate Action Network and a member of the Oak Park Building Commission, praised the board’s action.
“I think it is an exemplary action and sets the tone for future decisions,” Majkrzak told the Wednesday Journal.
Johnson and Cofsky receive Green Award
On Jan. 24, OPRF Supt. Greg Johnson and OPRF school board President Tom Cofsky received a Green Award from the Village of Oak Park’s Environmental and Energy Citizens Commission. The Green Awards recognize leadership in advancing equity centered climate action, climate resilience, and sustainability action.
Cofsky and Johnson were nominated by OPRF senior Manolo Avalos, the president of the school’s Environmental Club. The school board, working with Johnson and student activists, adopted a policy in 2022 in which the school’s goal is to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by the amount of 2012 emissions levels by 2050. OPRF ideally would like to become a 100% electric building which could allow it to reduce to its greenhouse emissions to at or near zero if it received all its electricity from green sources such as solar and wind.
In the short term, OPRF will continue to use natural gas heating for the rest of the building other than the new Project 2 space. At its Jan. 25 meeting, the school board also approved entering into a new natural gas contract for up to the next five years.