ENERGY EFFICIENT
With 85 cents of every dollar paying for staff salaries and benefits, Center Grove Community School Corporation made the choice to go green in order to save green in their annual operating budget.
In Q4 of 2025, school leaders had something to celebrate: Maple Grove Elementary School was the first school building of its size in the state to achieve Net Zero Energy status, producing more electricity than it used that quarter.
“When we talk about where we can reduce our spending, without making cuts or reductions in programming, it really has to come outside of staffing,” says Dr. Jason Taylor, Associate Superintendent of CGCSC. “Utilities were the next biggest opportunity for us to make an impact.”
Dr. Taylor says CGCSC spends about 11% on utility bills for the corporation and becoming energy efficient reduces that percentage, allowing money to be reallocated to satisfy other needs. Leaders took a hard look at the corporation’s six elementary schools, two middle schools, high school and other facilities, with a total of 22 buildings under the corporation’s control. Maple Grove Elementary School was the obvious choice to kick off this energy efficiency project.
“We actually started back in December of 2023, with installation happening that summer and then finished it up this past summer,” Dr. Taylor says.
According to CMTA, the company contracted for the project, their holistic analysis uncovered substantial savings at Maple Grove by undergoing a complete Geothermal conversion, coupled with the 1.007 MW ground-mounted solar array. Then, CMTA replaced all gas equipment and upgraded the facility’s conventional HVAC systems with state-of-the-art, energy-efficient water source heat pumps. The company was able to repurpose the hydronic piping for the heat pump loop and retain the existing ductwork.
CMTA estimates Maple Grove’s geothermal system and solar array will save over two million kWh of electricity annually. Center Grove also received nearly one million dollars in tax credits for the solar installations at Maple Grove and other facilities.
In CMTA’s January report to district leaders, the company reported $662,536 in savings for 2025. That’s more than $43,000 higher than their initial estimate of $619,140 in savings for the year.
CMTA’s total guaranteed savings going into 2026, is $834,518. That estimate factors in a new solar project on the roof of Sugar Grove Elementary School. With the completion of SGES, the estimated Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for 2026 will be nearly $3.5M.
[Text Wrapping Break]CGCSC sells bonds for these types of projects, which operate similarly to a mortgage, allowing the district to invest now and use the energy savings to pay it back over time.
“What we’re able to do here with Maple Grove and other projects is actually remove about half a million dollars in spending from that operations budget and utility spend that we can put toward staffing,” Dr. Taylor says.
Inside the maintenance room at Maple Grove, geothermal units collect groundwater that heats and cools the building. Currently, Maple Grove produces as much or more electricity than it uses each month.
“The operations fund comes from our local property taxes, and so what this does is it allows us to not continually increase that property tax rate and try to hold it a little more flat even though our costs are going up,” Dr. Taylor says. “We were able to take advantage of some of the rebates provided through the Inflation Reduction Act and that really kicked in for the geothermal energy in a big way, taking off about a third of that cost to install. The solar was a little bit less than that, but still is a great return.”
Maple Grove was selected as the first building for this project due to the cost of its 20-year-old system. The school itself is home to around 750 students.
“In addition to financial benefits for the corporation, it’s renewable energy. It doesn’t produce any kind of pollution. It just simply creates electricity and provides it right to our building,” Dr. Taylor says. “We’re able to sell that back and honestly help the local utility providers not have to purchase as much from the power plants throughout the state.”
CGCSC is also working to educate the student body on its renewable energy initiatives as they apply to lessons. They are installing digital information panels that students can view and teachers can incorporate the real-time data into classroom lessons as a powerful, real-world learning tool.
“We didn’t invent this solution for schools, but we definitely took it to a new level, creating an entire building that we could remove from the grid,” Dr. Taylor says.
Comments 1
This is fantastic, and we love seeing this type of investment. Please note that Sheridan School Corporation took their entire campus net zero, as did Mill Creek elementary, and several MSD Wayne Township school buildings.