Energy challenge winners announced

The second Fall Energy Challenge is finished and has a new set of winners.

The DeVault Alumni Center, Ashton Center and Phi Mu sorority were announced Friday as this year’s Fall Energy Challenge winners.

The three buildings were among the 12 residence halls, 19 academic buildings and nine greek houses that took part in the four-week competition.

The event, sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, challenges building managers, students and members of the greek community to reduce water and electricity consumption based on past baseline usage.

In 2010, Willkie Quad, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Alpha Omicron Pi sorority won.

“I like to see when a new building is in the front,” said Will McHenry, challenge coordinator and intern with the Office of Sustainability. “It’s kind of showing that they were doing well in the past, but they got a new group of students — a little more engagement. It’s nice to see a new building in the front and saving more.”

This year, Ashton took first place of the residence halls by using 18.4 percent less energy than its expected baseline. The top three residence halls saved a combined total of 142,226 gallons of water and 115,187 kWh of electricity.

Phi Mu consumed 12 percent less than its expected baseline, and the top sororities saved 10,074 kWh of electricity and 18,484 gallons of water.

For the academic buildings, the DeVault Alumni Center used 36.7 percent less energy than its expected usage.

Total savings of energy from all buildings combined was 359,595 kWh of electricity and 494,739 gallons of water.

McHenry said that buildings that have won in the past — Teter Quad, for example — continued to do well this year, but because their usage was based on last year’s, they are kept to a high standard.

This challenge, McHenry also said, differed from the past several years because of the reputation it had already built on campus. More effort was placed on engagement and cooperative efforts.

“A lot of time in the past has been spent on just getting it started and expanding it to include more buildings,” McHenry said. “This semester, since we’re at a comfortable place, we didn’t try to expand any buildings but changing engagement in programming and excitement for the challenge.”

This promotion included more events, programs and posters in the residence halls and involving more students, McHenry said.

Hopefully, the challenge will lead into sustained efforts to reduce electricity and water consumption, he said.

“Ideally, we wouldn’t have to have a competition to have students reduce energy use and water — it would be a year-long thing,” he said. “Even though the challenge is beneficial in the sense it can encourage students to save energy water, it can be a little detrimental because it’s only a four-week thing. It should be a life-long, consistent activity.”