Keeping classrooms cool won’t come cheap.
Keeping classrooms cool won’t come cheap.
As climate change pushes summer heat into the school year, many schools are struggling to cope with overheated classrooms and inadequate cooling systems. The Center for Climate Integrity partnered with the engineering firm Resilient Analytics to estimate the cost for public schools to keep schools at safe temperatures in the face of climate change.
Hotter Days, Higher Costs: The Cooling Crisis in America’s Classrooms analyzed localized heat trends during the school year in 1970 (1955-1984 average) and 2025 (2010-2039 average) using well-established and publicly available historical gridded climate data and downscaled climate model output. Our analysis assumes a threshold of 32 days above 80°F during the school year as the point at which air conditioning is needed, based on engineering protocols, peer-reviewed studies examining the relationship between heat and learning, and actual practice in school systems across the country. This report is an updated version of the report released in May 2021, and is based on the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD).
Installation costs
To identify climate-driven cooling system installations, we used historical climate data and climate model output to tally the number of days above the 80°F threshold during the school year in 1970 and 2025. Schools that crossed the 32-day threshold during that time span were identified as needing a cooling installation. Using the national school database and standard engineering protocols, we calculated the cost to install a standard HVAC system. While some school districts may initially install window units as a stopgap cooling measure, such units provide far inferior cooling, no ventilation, and can be much costlier in the long run.
Upgrade costs
Some schools that needed air conditioning prior to 1970 will need to upgrade the cooling capacity of their systems to deal with more extreme heat as a result of climate change. To identify these schools, we analyzed the demand for cooling (measured using cooling degree days) in 1970 and 2025 and used the Department of Energy Commercial Reference Building models to identify the necessary cooling capacity. As HVAC systems typically need to be replaced every 30 years, we included only the increased cost for a higher cooling capacity system — not the full cost of a new system — as a climate-driven cost.
Operations and maintenance costs
Cooling costs don’t end with installation. Operating costs were calculated using state-level energy prices and the relationship between cooling degree days, building specifications, and HVAC system energy use. For schools that required an HVAC installation, operation and maintenance costs were calculated using the total estimated energy costs in 2025, plus a standard maintenance estimate. For schools that required an HVAC upgrade or had no equipment costs, operating costs were calculated using the increase in cost between 1970 and 2025; no increase in maintenance costs was estimated for these schools.
Local temperature change may necessitate local adaptation of buildings in which people live and work, technologies for heating or cooling, energy sources for heating and cooling… All such adaptations are costly and some would drastically change the way people live and work.
Hundreds of districts across the country are experiencing more than three to four additional weeks of school days over 80°F than there were in 1970, leading to a growing need for cooling systems that meet engineering and public health criteria.
As a result, U.S. schools face tremendous costs to install, upgrade, operate, and maintain HVAC systems in the face of climate change.
Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.
Keeping classrooms at temperatures tolerable for learning is a bare minimum requirement for a functioning educational system. The costs explored in this study have been thrust on school systems by polluters that knowingly caused climate change and knew their products would lead to enormous damage and costs to society but lied about it in order to protect their profits.
As officials, parents, taxpayers, and teachers grapple with the price tag and trade-offs necessary to keep schools at safe temperatures for students, we must hold polluters to the same standard we teach our children: When you make a mess, you have to clean it up.
Oil and gas executives turned up the heat in these classrooms; they need to pay their fair share to keep students safe.
...by the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.