California Green Campus Programs Awarded for Best Practices in Energy Efficiency, Sustainability

For the sixth year in a row, Green Campus interns dominated the 9th annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, with three campuses receiving Best Practices in Student Energy Efficiency awards, and one campus receiving the Best Practices in Student Sustainability award. Each campus will give a formal presentation about their projects at the conference, which takes place June 20 – 23 at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

Here's a peek at the winning schools and their energy-saving projects:

• Cal Poly Pomona was awarded Best Practices in Student Energy Efficiency for its parking garage lighting assessment. Interns took inventory of these structures and recommended retrofits that could save over $61,000, or nearly 437,000 kWh. The interns presented their findings to campus staff and administrators.
• West Los Angeles Community College was awarded Best Practices in Student Energy Efficiency for its outstanding outreach initiative which included the Hit the Switch campaign (friendly reminder stickers on light switch plates), Lavatory Learnings (educational bathroom flyers) and Mock Energy Bills (banners citing the link between individual behavior and campus energy costs).
• UC Santa Cruz was awarded Best Practices in Student Energy Efficiency for its dining energy efficiency project which included a bi-lingual (English and Spanish) video to instruct dining hall staff and students about best practices in energy and water efficiency in food storage and preparation. The project also involved a dining hall grading system, in which interns inspected each of the five dining halls on campus using an energy/water conservation checklist. The interns estimated an annual water savings of over 821,000 gallons, if all recommended practices are implemented.
• Cal Poly SLO was awarded Best Practices in Student Sustainability for its residence hall energy competitions as well as its over-all sustainability initiatives encompassing orientation, residence life and academic opportunities. By incorporating creative marketing in the residency hall competition, interns at Cal Poly SLO achieved energy savings of nearly 24,000 kWh, 208,000 gallons of water and over $5,000 in just one month.