Tucson Unified School District is getting some national recognition for its renewable energy usage.

The Environmental Protection Agency ranked the Old Pueblo’s largest school district number 2 of the country’s top 30 K-12 schools generating the most green power. The district also placed 12 on the top 30 for green power production in  the entire country.

TUSD currently generates about 20 million kilowatt-hours of green energy every year from the solar energy systems scattered at various schools. That meets 20 percent of the schools’ electricity use, according to a TUSD press release. The EPA says it is the equivalent to the electricity use of nearly 2,000 average American homes annually.

The district began installing solar rooftop panels—they hoped for a total of 38,000—last spring.  They anticipated to save $170,000 in the first year and more than $11 million in energy costs over the 20-year life of the 11-megawatt project, the district says. 

“Over 19,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be averted from local power plants in the project’s first full year of operation, along with 23.5 tons of nitrous oxides,” the district says on its website.

Others on the list include Apple and Google.

This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2015.

I was born and raised in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I moved to Tucson about 10 years ago. Since I was old enough to enjoy reading, I developed an interest in writing, and telling stories through different...

10 replies on “EPA: TUSD is No. 2 on Top 30 K-12 Schools Generating Green Power”

  1. I guess the epa forgot tusd schools are full of asbestos and lead.

    How environmentally discriminating of them.

  2. I guess the epa forgot tusd schools are full of asbestos and lead.

    How environmentally discriminating of them.

  4. Maybe TUSD can get Elon Musk to partner with them to from a solar technician training program within the JTED scope to provide a trade school level education for qualified high school kids and a pipeline to jobs within Musk’s SolarCity…..

    Most of our kids would be better served by trade or tech school level certfication options at the high school level. College is not for everyone and most kids would be better off without it if they had a real option for gaining skills while in high school. and avoiding the crippling debt.

  5. Phoenix could get some recognition, too, if they could just find a way to harness all that hot air during legislative sessions!

  6. In the late 80s the TUSD schools went through a major asbestos removal project. I know. I lived through it at Holladay Intermediate Magnet School. It was a big mess at the time.

  7. Human Bean needs to address his comment to the AZ Legislature and Governor who nearly eliminated the Pima and Maricopa JTED programs so they could give money to the prisons, etc. JTED provides that sort of “trade school level education” and a pipeline to jobs.

  8. I was at a TUSD board meeting one evening when a father spoke in Call to the Audience about the ugly (and dangerous) array of pillars supporting the solar panels on an area of his child’s school campus where the children used to be able to run and play freely. He said the parent community at this school had not been consulted about the installation, and their complaints and requests for some improvements to be made that would make the pillars less hazardous for children running in that area were not being heard.

    Driving by campuses around town, you do see these arrays installed in areas where children play. Relevant questions: why were they not installed on the roofs of buildings? in parking lots? Could better results have been achieved if the district had worked collaboratively with its parent communities during the planning process?

    As for other types of campus projects that could be undertaken (including addressing the deteriorating playgrounds, rats, crumbling ceiling tiles, and poorly maintained electrical systems) there’s a simple explanation for why they are not the priority: fixing these problems will not make the district money (unless you count the potential for preventing damaging lawsuits, but elimination of liabilities and prevention of future losses is apparently not a tangible enough benefit for TUSD planners). The solar panels, on the other hand, will not only create a new income stream, they will allow the district to send out press releases letting the community know that they have placed in some national rankings completely unrelated to the delivery of quality education or to the creation of developmentally appropriate, child-friendly spaces on TUSD campuses.

    As usual, when it comes to the conditions children in these schools experience, the priorities are sadly misplaced — both the district’s priorities in its initiatives and Tucson Weekly’s priorities in what it chooses to report to the community.

  9. TUSD schools that are for sale warn of needed asbestos cleanup. Most paints have lead from the 50s and 60s and we all know about the lack of maintenance the district has done the last 40 years.

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