Multi-land Benefit Development
This summer these recurring narratives have again dominated headlines:
- How do we leverage limited resources to combat the broad area of climate threats? More importantly, how do we account for real trade-offs that come with any initiative?
- Can Sustainable Green Infrastructure be Economically Viable?
- Can Our Grid Support Electrification?
- How do we balance the need for removing natural land and habitat for Energy infrastructure and urban use ??
These are all important questions and ultimately require a development process to weigh pros and cons and prioritize where investment will have the greatest impact for our environment and most importantly the people who live there.
The primary metric that our industry prioritizes when developing climate-smart Infrastructure is the “reduction” of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). While that is a great, clear, and measurable area that policy makers can march towards towards, we feel this is a narrow lens to use when allocating investment dollars.
Other critical challenges are just as important but hard to measure:
Conserving healthy soil and working lands
Maintaining clean and accessible water resources
Preserving critical habitat and biodiversity
This list can go further but I use it as an example to pose a critical question.
Is our current framework empowering decision makers to make the greatest climate and societal impact for each investment dollar spent?
At CSI we challenge our design team and our clients to think outside the box. One area that we continually advocate for is examining “multi-benefit” land uses that can bring an integrated solution into a single project.
Today, we want to share a case study of how a California school district developed an integrated renewable energy project to address multiple challenges their facilities team faced.
BACKGROUND:
Pittsburg Unified School District is a K-12 public school system that serves over 11,300 students in the East Bay region of California. The leadership has prioritized core sustainability programs across more than 15 campuses in the District. Their efforts have ranged from energy conservation programs, renewable energy development, and ecology and water programs at their facilities. CSI had the privilege of supporting PUSD in their goal to enhance their electric bus fleet and bring outdoor education to their student body.
CHALLENGES:
1. Land Use – For any who have spent much time in bay area, space comes at a premium. With limited roof space and unused land, expanding infrastructure needed careful planning
2. Energy Generation – PUSD faced a common challenge. With electrification of their district and bus fleet they needed to meet the infrastructure and cost requirement of expanded electricity use.
3. Environmental Impact/Storm Water – Just as Land and Electricity is expensive in California, so is the ever complicated expense related to water. Public School districts face similar challenges as other industries with a severe drought not relenting in the state.
SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION:
To create an integrated solution with PUSD that addressed their infrastructure needs and climate goals we decided to leverage emerging solar & wind technologies to maximize district land currently being utilized for wastewater capture.
PUSD Integrated Energy Project
Our goal was to develop a fully integrated infrastructure system which:
Expanded EV charging infrastructure
EV and current electrical use offset by 170kW of on site renewable energy
Developed within an existing 1 acre bioswale using new light filtering solar modules
Preserving the stormwater facility, runoff from the facility and bus washing station was diverted and naturally filtered through the bioswale before returning to the local watershed.
The native vegetation of the bioswale sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and preserves local biodiversity
Created adjacent outdoor learning areas with signs to highlight each part of the project for students to learn about sustainability in an immersive environment
If we chose to focus solely on reducing GHG emissions then it would be reasonable to stop at solar and EV infrastructure. With the creative thinking of the leadership team at PUSD we were able to address extended metrics such as water quality and conservation, preserving natural habitat and biodiversity, and leveraging the limited land available to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, an often overlooked manner to reduce GHG levels.
At CSI we aspire to address the following in each project we design:
Environmental Impact
Social Progress
Economic Viability
Beyond the opportunity to address multiple environmental and climate objectives in a single project. We were able to leverage a single funding effort with PUSD to reduce their operating cost and create a high impact for their investment. This project allows annual funding to directly support their students and community rather than utility bills. This project also created a first of its kind immersive learning environment to educate students on renewables and environmental curriculum.
