New findings reinforce a hard truth: the systems in California meant to protect children at school from a changing climate are too often failing them. UC Santa Barbara’s 2035 Initiative and UndauntedK12 published a new report, Analysis: The State of School HVAC in California, assessing more than 70,000 school HVAC units in over 1,600 California schools, completed through the California Schools Healthy Air, Plumbing, and Efficiency Program (CalSHAPE).
In addition, the organization published the CalSHAPE School HVAC Explorer, an interactive tool mapping unit-level assessment data from funded CalSHAPE HVAC projects. The tool provides information on the number of units assessed, replacement recommendations, ability to filter wildfire smoke, and whether the unit burns fossil fuels.