» Campus Conservation Nationals 2013

Event Info
Discussion

Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN) is the largest nationwide electricity and water reduction competition on college and university campuses. In its third year, CCN gives a common voice and motivation to hundreds of thousands of students, all working together to reduce consumption and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

CCN 2013 is an opportunity to organize students and staff, host educational events, and challenge your friends to participate in fun events that can have an immediate and lasting impact on your school’s carbon emissions and campus culture.

How it Works

When: February 4th – April 26th 2013
CCN uses a competition window model, which means that participating schools can host their 3 week competition on campus anytime during the competition window. Schools participating in peer-to-peer or group competitions will need to coordinate exact competition dates.

What: 3 week energy and water competition between campus buildings
If you are a residential college or university, students in residence halls will compete for the greatest percent reduction in their buildings.This year we are also piloting a Community College Challenge, where community college campuses can compete between classroom and office buildings.

Schools can choose to compete against buildings on their own campus, in a state or regional competition, or against a select group of peer institutions, with savings from all participants accumulating as we strive to achieve a national challenge goal.

How: Lucid Building Dashboard
The competition will be run and visualized using Lucid’s Building Dashboard®. Participating schools will be given access to a Building Dashboard® to enter data from their utility meters, instantly compare performance, share winning strategies, and track standings among the leading schools and buildings.

CCN Goals

Engage, educate, motivate, and empower students to conserve resources in their residences.
Achieve measurable reductions in electricity and water use, preventing thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted.
Foster a culture of conservation within your campus community, and propel your campus sustainability initiatives.
Participate in a program that enables students to teach themselves conservation behaviors that they can employ in the home and workplace in the future.
Enable students to develop leadership, community organizing, and career development skills.

Why Energy and Water Use in Buildings?

On residential college and university campuses, activities that take place in buildings typically account for the vast majority of energy use, water use, and total greenhouse gas emissions associated with the institution’s ecological footprint (e.g., greater than 90% for all three at Oberlin College, Heede and Swisher 2009).

Prior research (Cialdini 1993) has shown that resource reduction competitions in residential housing provide an important means of engaging, educating, motivating, and empowering students to conserve resources and foster behavior change.

It’s All About Behavior Change

This competition offers valuable educational opportunities, such as enabling students to teach themselves conservation behaviors, as well as environmental and economic benefits. While most schools recognize the value of upgrading infrastructure as a mechanism for increasing resource use efficiency, changing the behavior of building occupants is a critical component of conservation. Above all, Campus Conservation Nationals is designed to empower the future generation of energy and environmental leaders, and foster a culture of conservation within campus communities.

Questions? Contact us: [email protected]

via: http://www.competetoreduce.org