「英中对照」美国K12学校如何借助ESCO模式缩小800亿美元设施维修缺口

Findings by a federal watchdog that students missed 3.5 million days last year because of plumbing, HVAC and other problems at public schools validates what facilities professionals have been saying for years, the head of the National Association of Energy Service Companies says.全国能源服务公司协会负责人表示，联邦监督机构的调查结果证实了设施专业人员多年来的说法：去年，公立学校因管道、HVAC及其他问题导致学生缺课350万个上学日。

Facilities professionals have been raising the alarm that $80 billion in backlogged school maintenance and repairs is impacting students’ learning experience, and now that’s been quantified, said NAESCO Executive Director Timothy Unruh. The U.S. Government Accountability Office released findings last month showing that a fifth of school districts had to cancel classes at least once in the 2024-25 academic year because of facilities issues.  NAESCO执行董事Timothy Unruh表示，设施专业人员一直在发出警示：学校积压的维护和维修需求达800亿美元，正影响学生的学习体验，如今这一情况已得到量化。美国政府问责局上月发布的调查结果显示，五分之一的学区不得不取消课程，此类情况在2024-25学年因设施问题至少出现过一次。  

“What we find is that our next generation is being negatively impacted by the condition of our schools,” Unruh told Facilities Dive. “The U.S. school system has an opportunity to make improvements in student performance simply by investing in their facilities. So, the report gives us solid evidence that we need to look more at how we make those investments.”“我们发现，我们的下一代正受到学校状况的负面影响，”Unruh告诉Facilities Dive。“美国学校体系有机会仅凭投资自身设施来提升学生的学业表现。因此，这份报告为我们提供了确凿证据，表明我们需要更多地关注如何开展这些投资。”

NAESCO members are energy service companies, or ESCOs, that work with building operators to retrofit facilities to improve energy performance and reduce emissions. Although ESCOs focus on reducing facility energy costs, it’s not uncommon for facilities to use the HVAC, lighting and window changes that ESCOs typically make as a starting point for broader upgrades for a long-term extension of the building’s useful life, Unruh said last year in a webcast.  NAESCO成员是能源服务公司，即ESCO，它们与建筑运营方合作对设施进行改造，以提升能源绩效并减少排放。尽管ESCO专注于降低设施能源成本，但设施方常会把ESCO通常开展的HVAC、照明和窗户改造作为更广泛升级的起点，以长期延长建筑的使用寿命，Unruh去年在一次网络直播中表示。  

“They get a building that’s been renovated and no longer has a capital requirement hanging out there or some deferred maintenance thing they haven’t had time or money to do,” he said.“他们得到的是一栋经过翻新的建筑，不再有亟待满足的资本支出需求，也不再有因时间或资金不足而未能实施的逾期维护项目，”他说。

Whole-building approach整体建筑方法

The GAO report suggests schools would benefit from the whole-building approach that ESCOs take, especially given the difficulty they face accessing capital, Unruh said. Unruh表示，GAO报告表明，学校将受益于ESCO采用的整体建筑方法，尤其是考虑到它们在融资方面面临的困难。 

In the performance contracting system that ESCOs typically use, schools come up with as much funding as they can and the ESCOs — which get paid based on the long-term energy cost savings that are generated — absorb the difference. 在ESCO通常采用的绩效合同机制下，学校会尽可能多地筹措资金，而ESCO——其报酬基于所产生的长期能源成本节约——承担差额部分。 

“If you don’t have access to funds, then the performance contracting model is an ideal way to move forward,” he said. That model “uses whatever existing funds you have combined with savings they can achieve and mix those two together to create a … project to get as much [work done] as possible.”“如果你无法获得资金，那么节能绩效合约模式就是推进工作的理想途径，”他说。这种模式“利用你现有的任何资金，结合他们能够实现的节约，将两者融合在一起，形成一个……项目，以完成尽可能多的[工作]。”

 K-12 schools are the ESCO industry’s bread and butter. Last year, schools accounted for a third of ESCOs’ work — about $3 billion in services out of an industry total of roughly $11 billion, according to an analysis of the ESCO industry by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released earlier this month. K-12学校是ESCO行业的主要收入来源。根据本月早些时候发布的一项劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室对ESCO行业的分析，去年学校占ESCO业务量的三分之一——在行业总计约110亿美元的服务中约占30亿美元。

Schools have been relatively heavy users of ESCOs in part because of the financial role ESCOs play, Unruh said. 安鲁说，学校一直是ESCO相对较多的使用者，部分原因在于ESCO所发挥的财务作用。 

“The ESCO has a vested interest in the project,” he said. “The contractor, architect, engineer — they don’t have that.”“ESCO在项目中拥有既得利益，”他说。“承包商、建筑师、工程师——他们没有这种利益。”

The GAO report identified plumbing emergencies, extreme classroom temperatures, poor indoor air quality and building structural problems as the main reasons for school closures. School districts spent more than $200 billion last year on operations and maintenance, capital improvements and bond interest payments, almost a quarter of their budgets.  GAO报告将管道紧急情况、教室极端温度、室内空气质量差和建筑结构问题列为学校关闭的主要原因。去年，各学区在运营与维护、基本建设改造和债券利息支付上支出超过2000亿美元，几乎占其预算的四分之一。  

Despite the spending, officials in more than half of the school districts say their budget is insufficient to meet the maintenance and repair needs of their buildings. 尽管有这些支出，超过一半学区的官员表示，其预算不足以满足建筑物的维护和维修需求。 

One of the main ways available to them to get funding — bond issuances — is hard for many districts to implement, particularly in areas with low tax bases, according to a 2024 assessment of school funding disparities. The assessment focuses on California, but a lawsuit in Arizona used similar findings to argue the reliance on bond funding leads to widespread educational disparities by tax districts.根据2024年一项关于学校资金差距的评估，他们可获得资金的主要途径之一——发行债券——对许多学区来说难以实施，尤其是在税基较低的地区。该评估聚焦于加利福尼亚州，但亚利桑那州的一起诉讼利用类似的调查结果论证，依赖债券资金会导致各税区之间出现广泛的教育差距。

To the extent districts get bond issuances passed, it’s often for more teachers or new assets, Unruh said.安鲁说，就学区能够使债券发行获得通过而言，所筹资金往往用于招聘更多教师或购置新资产。

“Fixing something old doesn’t necessarily add a new benefit, it just keeps an old benefit alive,” Unruh said. “Public buildings across the country are faced with that. [Taxpayers] love to hear a school district is adding more teachers, but you don’t necessarily want to hear they’re going to spend all your money replacing boilers.”“修缮旧物不一定会带来新的收益，只是让旧有收益维持下去，”Unruh说。“全国各地的公共建筑都面临这个问题。[纳税人]乐于听到学区增加更多教师，但你未必愿意听到他们要把你们的钱全部用来更换锅炉。”

Schools having trouble getting financing could work with ESCOs offering energy as a service, or EaaS, but it’s an unfamiliar concept to taxpayers and could raise concerns if they believe schools that use it are giving up control of their assets, Unruh said. 难以获得融资的学校可以与提供能源即服务（EaaS）的ESCO合作，但Unruh表示，这一概念对纳税人来说并不熟悉；如果他们认为使用该服务的学校正在放弃对其资产的控制权，就可能引发担忧。 

In the energy-as-a-service model, the ESCO assumes control of the new HVAC and other systems it deploys in exchange for a fee. It’s a business model that commercial facilities are starting to show an interest in, but its approach is a hurdle in the public sector, he said. State or local law might not permit it.在能源即服务模式下，ESCO控制其部署的新HVAC及其他系统，以换取服务费。他说，这种商业模式正开始引起商业设施的兴趣，但其做法在公共部门是一道障碍。州或地方法律可能不允许这种模式。

“I would say there’s a desire among public facilities operators to do something like energy-as-a-service, but there’s not always a clear, clean pathway for them to do that,” he said. With schools, “you can only do what the legislation specifies you can do [and] the legislation doesn’t [necessarily] specify energy as a service.”“我认为，公共设施运营方有意愿采用能源即服务之类的模式，但他们并非总有明确、顺畅的途径这样做，”他说。就学校而言，“你只能做立法明确规定你可以做的事，[而且]立法[未必]明确规定能源即服务。”

The idea of handing over control to a private company could also be a roadblock to taxpayer acceptance. “Imagine you’re a taxpayer in a school district and the school district announces we’re going to sell off the assets of our boilers, chillers, lights and control system to a company X that will now manage that, and we’ll pay a fee to them,” he said. “That could be sensitive.”把控制权移交给私营公司的想法也可能阻碍纳税人接受。“设想你是某学区的一名纳税人，学区宣布我们将把锅炉、制冷机、照明设备和控制系统的资产出售给X公司，由该公司管理这些资产，而我们向其支付费用，”他说。“这可能很敏感。”