30 Percent Greener

By Bill Gerritz

Many students, staff and parents have been working to make ISB a more environmentally friendly, greener school. Much of this work has been done by our Green Panthers. Recently, three additional efforts have also achieved success.


#1 --- We have signed a contract to renew the air conditioning and lighting systems in the school. The result will be a reduction in CO2 emissions of 850,000 Kg per year or about 30% of the total amount of CO2 produced at School. In a significant side benefit, the new air conditioners will be very quiet, a big deal for students and staff bothered by our noisy old ones.


The contract represents a four way partnership between ISB, Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Control and the Thai Ministry of Energy. The combination of low interest loans from the Ministry and energy savings will give us a payback period of about 7.5 years. All work will be completed by the end of July.


#2 ---Construction of our new Cultural Center proceeds in accordance to plan and we are on course with our target of achieving the LEED Gold Certificate (from the U.S. Green Building Council). Energy models of our building in comparison with standard U.S. buildings confirm that our building will be a minimum of 29% more energy efficient. Needless to say that if our new building was to be compared with standard buildings in Bangkok the saving percentage would be much higher


#3 --- Last year we added about 144 bike parking places as an extension to the main entrance parking. In an attempt to encourage more students, teachers and parents who live in the vicinity of the school to use their bike as a means of transportation, and in order to resolve the congestion in the Elementary bike parking area, we’ll extend the bike parking capacity during the summer with a construction similar to the one done last summer on the other side. Our total bike parking capacity will go from 427 places 2 years ago and 571 places this year to 715 places by the beginning of August 2009.