A Report from Energy Ant — My Trip to Newport Coast Elementary School — an Energy Efficient School in Newport Beach, California

Last summer I spent an afternoon at Newport Coast Elementary School in California. I know, most of you spend all day at school. So what is special about this school that I would go there in the summer? Newport Coast Elementary is a High Performance School. A high performance school is one that uses new technology and ideas to design schools that save energy and money. By lowering energy usage and lowering utility bills, schools can use the money saved for other stuff.

Does your school look like this? One of the biggest differences between Newport Coast and your school most likely is the fact that there are lots of little buildings connected by outdoor walkways. This isn't a new idea, and isn't the most energy efficient way to build a school, but with great weather almost year round, classrooms can be in separate buildings and kids can get from place to place by walking outside.

Having separate buildings allows for some beneficial building designs. First, in many of the buildings there are windows on at least two sides of a room this not only lets more light into the rooms from the outside, but it also lets ocean breezes blow through the classrooms.

Things like ocean breezes and where the sun is in the sky were taken into consideration right from the beginning when the school was being designed.Even the building placement was effected by these things. Buildings could be placed in directions so that the sun and breeze would hit the rooms at a useful angle.

Some rooms had natural cross breezes from one side to the other while other rooms were installed with ventilation that sucked hot air out and let cool air flow in. Unlike most new schools, Newport Coast was originally designed to need NO air conditioning. It was later added for unusually hot summer days though.