Seattle Colleges Recognized as a Zero+ Champion of Sustainability for Advancing Campuswide Decarbonization

McKinstry, in partnership with Lumen Field, launched the Zero+ Champions of Sustainability Awards to recognize organizations making measurable progress in sustainability. Seattle Colleges has been recognized as a 2026 Champion for advancing decarbonization across its three-college district while using its campuses as living laboratories for students.

The district’s most ambitious effort is taking shape at Seattle Central College, where an aging steam heating system is being replaced with a planned 500,000-square-foot EcoDistrict designed to share energy across campus buildings. Rather than replace the existing fossil-fueled steam system with another steam plant, Seattle Central is pursuing a heat pump-based district energy system that could eliminate steam use across the campus and create opportunities to serve neighboring properties in the future.

The project is part of a broader sustainability strategy that spans Seattle Colleges’ three campuses, combining renewable energy, energy efficiency, building modernization and workforce education. In recent years, the district has secured roughly $2.28 million in climate and sustainability grants to advance this work.

Rethinking How a Campus Uses Energy

Seattle Central’s existing steam system is reaching the end of its useful life, creating both a major infrastructure challenge and an opportunity to rethink how the campus is heated.

A neighborhood-scale energy study identified opportunities to share energy between buildings rather than operate them as isolated systems. The resulting plan calls for commercially available air-to-water and water-to-water heat pumps to provide hot water to campus buildings while allowing the college to retain existing building infrastructure where possible.

The planned system will deliver 160-degree hot water to campus buildings and could eventually expand beyond the college. By moving away from steam and toward shared electric heating, Seattle Central can address aging infrastructure while laying the foundation for a lower-carbon campus energy system.

The college secured a $755,000 Washington State Department of Commerce Clean Energy Fund grant to help launch the effort, which is being advanced through the state’s Energy Savings Performance Contracting program.

McKinstry is supporting Seattle Colleges in evaluating the campuswide energy strategy and identifying a path to implementation that balances decarbonization, infrastructure needs and long-term costs.

A Districtwide Strategy

The EcoDistrict is only one part of Seattle Colleges’ broader approach.

In 2022, all three individual campuses received Washington State Department of Commerce solar grants to install on-campus solar arrays. The district also secured state Energy Efficiency grants in 2021 for upgrades to HVAC systems, heating and cooling equipment, lighting, plumbing, sensors and controls.

Together, the projects show how Seattle Colleges is approaching sustainability across its entire portfolio rather than treating individual buildings as standalone opportunities. The district is using grant funding and performance-based project delivery to address aging infrastructure, improve energy performance and advance its long-term decarbonization goals.

That work builds on more than a decade of formal sustainability planning. Seattle Colleges launched its Chancellor’s Sustainability Initiative in 2009 and established a districtwide Sustainability Committee that brings together students, faculty and staff. Its Sustainability Plan is structured around the national AASHE STARS framework.

Turning Campus Infrastructure into a Classroom

For Seattle Colleges, the value of these projects extends beyond energy and carbon reductions.

The district serves tens of thousands of students each year across North Seattle College, Seattle Central College and South Seattle College, as well as five specialty training centers and a district office. With more than 130 workforce and academic programs, the district has an opportunity to connect real infrastructure projects with the skills students will need in a changing economy.

The campuses themselves become part of that education. Students and faculty can see new energy technologies operating in the buildings where they study and engage with the same decarbonization challenges facing communities, businesses and building owners across Washington.

That connection is particularly relevant as the region works to electrify buildings, improve energy efficiency and develop the workforce needed to support the transition.

Zero+ Champion of Sustainability

Seattle Colleges is demonstrating how higher education can use its existing facilities as both an opportunity for decarbonization and a platform for learning.

From replacing an aging steam system with a planned shared-energy EcoDistrict to expanding solar and efficiency improvements across all three colleges, the district is pairing long-term infrastructure planning with measurable investment.

McKinstry and Lumen Field recognize Seattle Colleges as a 2026 Zero+ Champion of Sustainability for showing what campuswide decarbonization can look like in practice, while preparing students to help build the next generation of sustainable communities.