Deploying energy management solutions in schools and public buildings can be daunting under the best circumstances, but improving rural schools energy efficiency through HVAC upgrades and advanced controls is even more challenging in rural areas because of their unique barriers.
The U.S. DOE notes that rural customers frequently face a “lack of qualified contractors willing to serve rural areas” and/or “unavailability of a local, skilled workforce” to complete energy efficiency upgrades. Long travel distances are a known cost driver in rural work. ACEEE reports that for rural customers, “travel distances can be long for contractors,” which increases costs and limits contractor choice. Further, HVAC labor demand is rising nationally, meaning rural areas are competing with larger markets for skilled technicians. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected 8% growth from 2024–2034 for heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers (“much faster than average”).
CEL recently completed a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR) project in rural areas of California, Oregon, and Washington to retrofit several public schools with grid-interactive, energy-efficient HVAC controls. These upgrades were designed to improve rural schools energy efficiency while modernizing aging building systems. Going in, we were aware that rural communities generally don’t have access to technology, energy, or grid resilience advancements, yet they often bear a higher energy burden than their urban and suburban counterparts.
Because many rural communities are at the end of a utility’s power distribution line and unconnected to redundant circuits, power quality and outage duration tend to be worse for rural customers. This has critical impacts on commercial building systems such as refrigeration, which are key to reducing food spoilage and contamination in agricultural production and of particular interest to the USDA.
These infrastructure challenges can complicate energy efficiency upgrades in rural buildings, including schools that rely on older HVAC systems and limited technical support.
As we deployed our machine-learning-based optimization platform, however, we ran into additional challenges we didn’t expect.
Resource time: Although our platform is designed to be simple to deploy, the basic steps needed to qualify and prepare a site often took longer in rural locations than we initially expected. Many of the facilities teams we worked with wore multiple hats, so even routine requests, such as gathering mechanical drawings, had to compete with day-to-day operational needs.
Aging infrastructure: Due in part to the lack of adequate staffing, documentation didn’t always match the equipment in the field, and some systems had been extended well past their expected service life. At one site, a city hall in rural Oregon built in the late 1800s, we found multiple generations of HVAC and electrical equipment layered over decades of remodels. Office reconfigurations had created zones served by different air handling units and heat pumps, resulting in overlapping control areas and added complexity for metering.
Limited local technical expertise: During the USDA work, CEL had to be sourced from the nearest metro area and required compensation for travel, making their work more expensive than in urban projects. In some cases, this issue of commute time alone disqualified a site. For example, one potential site could not move forward because it had no in-house IT team, the external IT contractor, located four hours away, did not want the business, and the thermostat installers declined to travel to the site to quote the job.
To address the staffing challenges in the communities in which the USDA work was being done, CEL began building a workforce pipeline alongside local workforce development organizations. Through partnerships with regional school districts, local universities, and various nonprofit organizations, we helped create structured training pathways for students and early-career professionals in controls, building systems, and IT fundamentals.
Developing this workforce capacity is essential for scaling rural schools energy efficiency projects, which often require technicians with skills that span HVAC, controls, and building data systems.
Specifically, CEL tapped early investor Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum consultation for the Hoquiam and Aberdeen School Districts. BEF provided the districts with their libraries of teacher-developed STEM and career and technical education (CTE) activities and provided support in identifying effective education strategies as needed to help USDA project partners facilitate their teacher engagement offerings in the district.
CEL hosted a Smart & Resilient Schools Summit with Bonneville Environmental Foundation and Hoquiam School District to create viable solutions for greener schools, affordable energy, and healthier spaces for communities.
South Seattle College’s Sustainable Building Science Technology (SBST) Bachelor of Applied Science degree program agreed to integrate more sustainable technology curriculum, and interns from the program helped with CEL’s projects.
Grey’s Harbor Youth Works, which provides local 15–19-year-old high school students with scholarships, internships, and mentoring, worked with local utilities and contractors to create plans to implement new programs for students to learn from the work being done. Along with teachers, they developed three specialized internships and job training programs focused on energy efficiency, renewable energy integration, and carbon reduction strategies as well as provided scholarships and financial assistance.
Gray’s Harbor College pledged to hire an industry expert to develop HVAC curriculum that meets state guidelines, purchase equipment and cutting-edge technology to provide industry-relevant training, and align financial aid resources, such as Federal Pell Grant, Washington College Grant, and scholarships to remove financial barriers to make the program accessible.
The community college offers workforce education and training for community members preparing for new careers or upgrading their work skills, helping build the local expertise needed to support energy efficiency upgrades in rural schools and public buildings.
Coastal Community Action Program, a nonprofit that helps low-income individuals and families achieve economic stability, committed to helping source workforce solutions through its community, including retired seniors, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families recipients, and vocational rehabilitation staff.
These collaborations (and many more) directly support the product ecosystem by increasing the pool of technicians who can commission CEL sites correctly, maintain connectivity, respond to alerts, and ensure long-term operational quality.
Many of the issues we encountered, including inconsistent equipment configuration, gaps in building automation system (BAS) knowledge, and limited on-site technical capacity, reflect a broader industry shortage of technicians trained at the intersection of HVAC, controls, and data systems.
Technology, community adoption, and deployment ability are interdependent. The latter relies on having the necessary skills in the community. Strengthening regional workforce capacity reduces installation costs, makes long-term maintenance easier, and increases reliability across diverse building types.
The abandoned Northern Pacific Railway Hoquiam River Swing Bridge still stands over the picturesque Hoquiam River in Grays Harbor County, Washington. The bridge was owned by the Northern Pacific Railway (later the Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad).
For CEL, this approach helps accelerate commercialization while ensuring that rural schools energy efficiency improvements can be deployed reliably and affordably as we expand into new climates, tariffs, and customer segments.
The communities served by the USDA work are beautiful, diverse, and vibrant, with many bordering tribal lands, oceans, and forests. They are dynamic places full of people who want to take part in the energy transition and are ready to modernize their communities for greater energy efficiency. They are worth the investment.
