This year, GDS purchased renewable energy credits (RECs) to offset the school’s carbon footprint from electrical utility usage. The change came after years of advocacy from the heads of Enviro Club.
Enviro heads seniors Mac Penniman and Sam Pastreich and junior Oliver Wolin spearheaded the initiative, collaborating with Chris Oster, the school’s environmental stewardship and campus commuting manager, and Director of Operations and Innovation Tim Lyons.
“We met with Chris [Oster] and Tim [Lyons] several times to advocate for the switch,” Wolin said. “In the end, the school did it over the summer, and now GDS pays for these renewable energy credits, which displace the dirty energy in our usage.”
RECs are certificates that verify that renewable energy, such as wind or solar, has been generated on behalf of the buyer. While the physical electricity supplied to GDS still comes from the standard power grid—a mix of fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable sources—the RECs allow the school to claim carbon neutrality.
“It’s not that we’re actually getting green energy in our power lines,” Penniman explained. “We’re still getting a mix of nuclear, fossil fuels and solar because it’s all in PEPCO. But what we’re doing is offsetting all of our carbon emissions. Before, we were using the equivalent of 2,000 transatlantic flights’ worth of carbon every year. Now, we’re a net-zero campus.”
The Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) serves electricity to D.C. and Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
Oster described the logistical challenges of making the switch. “For a large commercial space like GDS, it’s less straightforward because we have big energy contracts,” he said. “But we were able to amend our contract and acquire renewable energy credits. This is the predominant way that businesses and institutions deal with carbon neutrality.”
Lyons told the Bit that the carbon credits offset the electrical footprint for GDS. “Electric is the classic one for offsets because, in a lot of places, it’s coal-fired,” he said.
The school’s existing energy contract extends until April 2025. The offsets negate the carbon footprint for the current contract. Lyons couldn’t recall the exact cost of the RECs but estimated they amounted to a 2% increase in the school’s electricity bill.
The students’ advocacy efforts began in October 2022, but progress stalled due to slow responses from administrators and transition in the GDS finance and operations teams. When the new school year began in the fall of 2024, Penniman reignited the effort with Wolin’s support.
A breakthrough came when Penniman emailed Head of School Russell Shaw in early September. “I shot Russell an email, and I was like, ‘Hey, here’s the research I’ve done,’” Penniman recalled. In the email, Penniman referred to the plan for GDS to go carbon-neutral as a “green dream” and expressed frustration over administrators who had stopped responding to emails.
Shaw responded, writing that he would reach out to the relevant staff members—Lyons and Oster—to clarify the next steps. “Within two weeks, Tim Lyons came up to me and said, ‘Hey, that thing you wanted, we did it,’” Penniman said.
“We took that idea from Mac [Penniman] and worked with a broker to arrange our school’s electricity supply contracts,” Lyons said. “That broker presented us with some options, one of which was the carbon offsets.”
According to Lyons, the alternative to carbon offsets would have been renegotiating the electricity contract with PEPCO. “It’s usually not to your advantage to change your contract unless there’s a much better deal out there,” he said. The broker found the cheapest offset options for the school and purchased the credits.
“This is a really big deal,” Pastreich said. “We’re leading other private schools in the area, showing them it’s possible to convert to completely renewable energy.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Penniman added. “That’s a lot of carbon we’re keeping out of the atmosphere, and hopefully, it sets an example for other schools to follow.”
While the RECs represent a significant step toward sustainability, Lyons pointed out that deeper cultural changes could have an even greater impact. “School operations and the business office can only do so much because of money and contracts. The real difference for a place like GDS in terms of sustainability would be a cultural change,” Lyons said. “Things like tolerating a one-degree cooler building in the winter and one degree warmer in the summer would make the biggest change.”