An ENERGY STAR Dynasty: DMPS Honored for 13th Year
Des Moines Public Schools is proud to announce that it has received the 2024 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. This marks the 13th year in a row DMPS has earned national recognition from the ENERGY STAR program for its work to reduce energy use, save public funds, and improve the environment.
“This honor is the result of a lot of good work by the school district’s operations team along with a commitment by DMPS to be energy efficient and fiscally prudent in all of our work. Even though our school buildings are more than 70 years old on average, we have made improvements to those facilities and managed them in such a way that we have avoided unnecessarily spending millions of dollars in public funds while at the same time doing our part to be environmentally responsible.”
Each year, the ENERGY STAR program honors a select group of businesses and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to energy efficiency and the transition to a clean energy economy. ENERGY STAR award winners lead their industries in the production, sale, and adoption of energy-efficient products, homes, buildings, services, and strategies. These efforts have saved more than 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity over the past 30 years.
Key accomplishments during 2023 that led to DMPS being honored included:
- Achieving ENERGY STAR certification at 34 schools and increasing the district average ENERGY STAR score to 74.9 in 2023.
- Saving more than $23 million in energy costs since 2008, including nearly $700,000 in 2023 alone, and lowering the average energy cost per square foot for the school district to $0.82 in 2023, compared to a national average of $1.03 per square foot.
- Leading the City of Des Moines to become the second-ranked mid-sized city on EPA’s 2023 ENERGY STAR Top Mid-Sized Cities listing.
- Using on-site solar energy at Jefferson Elementary, which has reduced utility expenditures by $50,000 and has saved over 900,000 pounds of CO2 emissions since going online in July 2021.
- Promoting energy practices and ENERGY STAR to the community through Energy Report Cards delivered to nearly 5,000 staff and interested parties across the country.
- Investing over $1 million in building automation systems and conducting retro-commissioning projects at 16 facilities in 2023 alone.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda creates unprecedented opportunity to build a clean energy economy, and private sector partners through programs like ENERGY STAR are leading the way,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “I congratulate this year’s ENERGY STAR award winners for their innovation and leadership, in delivering cost-effective energy efficient solutions that create jobs, address climate change, and contribute to a healthier environment for all.”
Winners are selected from a network of thousands of ENERGY STAR partners. For a complete list of 2024 winners and more information about ENERGY STAR’s awards program, visit energystar.gov/awardwinners.
About ENERGY STAR
ENERGY STAR® is the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, providing simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners helped American families and businesses avoid more than $500 billion in energy costs and achieve more than 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions. More background information about ENERGY STAR’s impacts can be found at www.energystar.gov/impacts.
