I was intrigued by this company profile that came across the wire this morning... since I wrote a short piece on reducing energy costs in schools for the June/July issue, and just spoke for a DA web seminar on sustainability in schools, I suppose I'm paying more attention to such things.
When you're looking at energy efficiency, there are two main spheres: changing behavior, and changing the infrastructure independent of behavior. For example: you can order everyone to turn the temperature up a couple degrees in the summer, reducing A/C use, or install more efficient climate control systems and let them set it where they will. Perhaps ideally would be to address both spheres simultaneously, thereby saving the most possible.
Schools For Energy Efficiency is an example of the behavior side, they're a sort of consultancy firm for K12 schools, providing a program for changing the behavior of staff and students, with a systemic plan, awareness materials, training, and utility tracking available with an overall goal of reducing energy use by 10%, though their average thus far since 2002 has been about 13%. They work nationwide. Might be a worthwhile company to check out.
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