The ENERGY STAR Score for Kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) schools applies to both primary and secondary schools. This score is not applicable to college, cégep, or university classroom facilities and laboratories; vocational, technical or trade schools; or preschool or day care buildings. The objective of the ENERGY STAR score is to provide an unbiased fair assessment of the energy performance of a property, relative to its peers, taking into account the climate, weather, and business activities at the property. A statistical analysis of the peer building population is performed to identify the aspects of building activity that are significant drivers of energy use and then to normalize for those factors. The result of this analysis is an equation that predicts the energy use of a property based on its business activities. The energy use prediction for a building is compared to its actual energy use to yield a 1 to 100 percentile ranking of performance, relative to the national population.
Property types. The ENERGY STAR score for schools applies to primary and secondary schools, from kindergarten to grade 12. The score applies to an entire school whether it is a single building or a campus of buildings. Individual buildings that are part of larger K-12 campuses cannot receive their own score.
Reference data. The analysis for schools in Canada is based on data from the Survey on Commercial and Institutional Energy Use (SCIEU), which was commissioned by Natural Resources Canada(NRCan) and carried out by Statistics Canada, and represents the energy consumption year 2014.
Adjustments for weather and business. The analysis includes adjustments for:
- Number of workers on the main shift
- Percentage of space dedicated to food preparation
- Weather and climate (using heating degree days and cooling degree days, retrieved based on postal code)
- Percentage of building that is cooled
Release date. This is the second release of the ENERGY STAR score for K-12 schools in Canada. The ENERGY STAR score for schools is updated periodically as more recent data becomes available:
- Most recent update: March 2019
- Original release: July 2013
This document presents details on the development of the 1 - 100 ENERGY STAR score for K-12 school properties. More information on the overall approach to develop ENERGY STAR scores is covered in our Technical Reference for the ENERGY STAR Score, available at www.energystar.gov/ENERGYSTARScore. The subsequent sections of this document offer specific details on the development of the ENERGY STAR score for K-12 schools.
Download the K-12 Technical Reference for Canada (PDF, 2.8 MB)