On Friday, the U.S. Green Building Council officially launched its Center for Green Schools, an initiative devoted to changing how America’s schools are designed, constructed and operated. The center boasts a multi-million dollar, multi-year commitment from United Technologies Corp. (makers of Carrier air conditioners, Otis elevators and Sikorsky helicopters, among other things) to help hundreds of schools become greener and more energy efficient over the next few years. And the center’s overall goal is to give everyone in the country a chance to attend a green school in this generation.

According to the center’s director, Rachel Gutter, focusing on schools is a natural way to bring green building into a context people care about. “Every person, in every state, from every party, cares about student performance,” she says. Improving our schools just might be the issue of the decade (or at least the past few weeks, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg), and greening school buildings is one way to approach the issue.

Green schools save money by using less energy and water. Studies have shown they help keep students and teachers healthy by locking out dampness and providing good ventilation. Sunny classrooms, better acoustics and comfortable temperatures, all hallmarks of green schools, have also been shown to improve student performance on tests. Green schools can improve neighborhoods, too, by cooling urban heat islands and reducing stormwater runoff.

School buildings that are designed and built green from the ground up can also serve as an interactive classroom, where kids can see environmental principles in action. In Canada’s new LEED-Platinum certified David Suzuki school, which opened in Windsor, Ontario last month, solar tubes that deliver daylight to interior rooms are exposed for kids to see. At Virginia’s Manassas Park Elementary, students eagerly watch for a green light outside the classroom, which signals that the ventilation system has been shut down because conditions are perfect for opening windows and letting in fresh air.

Since the USGBC launched its LEED for Schools guidelines in 2007, some 6,000 schools have registered and/or certified LEED projects. Gutter’s hope is that the center can facilitate greening projects at each of the nation’s 140,000 schools, colleges and universities. The resulting savings in energy costs alone, she says, would be in the tens of billions of dollars. Health care costs would also come down for the nation’s 60 million students, teachers and school staff.

Harder to quantify, but just as important, is creating a generation of green stewards. “There’s a six month waiting list to join the recycling team at the Montgomery County school where we live,” says Gutter. “In my day, you would have been beat up if you wanted to join the recycling team! We are creating students who are already fluent in green. They don’t have to be taught to make green choices.”