I keep wondering why public facilities don't make use of green technologies more frequently

More good would have been done by replacing the boilers with water cooled diesel engines driving electrical generators.

Hmm, sounds great, but what is the extra cost to build the school versus traditional building methods? What subsidies are they receiving?
Usually projects like this have horrible payback periods and that's why public and private facilities don't use "green" technologies.

Racqia, because of people like Slowburn

You could use Stirling cycle powered generators and still dump the heat into the boilers.

I would guess the payback period is fairly short if they're recovering 350 grand in half a heating season in New England! I don't know what the additional upkeep costs are on a green roof in a temperate climate with a deep winter. These things are catching on faster in tropical and sub-tropical climates where they reduce air conditioning costs significantly and there is no frost to worry about.

A local workable solution, without the nearby mill to provide the wood chips then what. would other schools cut down trees just to make chips? But if this burns truly waste product, bark then OK. Otherwise even sawdust is used to make products like MDF. My concern is people get the impression this could be done for all schools. Same as showing an article about the College of Southern Idaho and how most of heating is from geothermal. It only works because the college sits over an area with high geothermal activity.

Dvorak, what you mean is that you wonder why you don't hear about it more often. Around the country, many facilities are slowly "greening their footprint" but it's a slow process with a lot of upfront investment, so usually only something that happens in new developments by someone with the money to put down and the intention of staying long enough to see the payoff. Often tearing down an old building is less green (and more costly) than reusing it, despite it's limitations, so developers and designers also often think about that and work to slowly convert buildings rather than leveling an area and redoing it. Finally, with slow growth, people are hesitant to invest, so even if a higher portion of the new buildings going up are "green", the total number of new buildings has slowed, and several large investments have gone under.

I think it would probably be greener for the wood chips to be spread on the ground to provide the nutrients for the next generation of trees.
re; Tom Swift
There are some trees that their only commercial value is in their fuel value.

where's the passive solar that goes with it?