by Eric Punkay – Sustainability Analyst – Oct. 19, 2021
As part of the Energy Performance Contract (EPC) that DPS is engaged in with McKinstry, students have the opportunity to drive the behavioral changes necessary to reduce our resource consumption. The overall goals of this program are to improve comfort, increase energy efficiency and increase sustainability engagement and awareness.
Students are mentored by a powerED Champion with the assistance of staff from the Department of Sustainability and McKinstry. This year’s theme is Power Down and it is all about eliminating unnecessary electricity use. Students will perform classroom energy audits to identify electricity waste and encourage staff to be better stewards of our resources and environment.
There are 27 DPS buildings, encompassing 34 school programs, where powerED is active (school programs in bold need a Champion):
One of the solar arrays in DPS
Wind Turbines. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Z22
If you would like to become a Champion for your school and engage your students in making change, please contact Eric Punkay. To see how each of these schools is doing, go to the people.power.planet website and enter Denver for the district name.
Even if you are not in one of the powerED schools, you can still help to reduce our electricity use by powering down and unplugging equipment that is not in use, turning off lights that aren’t needed and encouraging those around you to do the same. Even sleeping computers are using energy and while an individual computer doesn’t use much, multiply that by the tens of thousands of computers we have in the district and we start to see significant electricity use, thousands of kiloWatt hours a month.