March 5, 2008—Students at Sultana High School and Desert Trails High School, both in California, were honored recently by the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) for “thinking and acting green.”
Through the Alliance’s Green Schools Program, students, faculty, and staff lowered energy costs in the Hesperia Unified School District by more than $660,000 over a five-year period, says the Alliance. In addition to saving money, the participating schools’ energy savings reduced the district’s CO2 emissions more than 2,000 tons, says ASE. The district also returned half the savings to the schools for further energy-efficiency activities and educational materials such as textbooks and computers.
The Alliance to Save Energy is a coalition of prominent business, government, environmental, and consumer leaders who promote the efficient and clean use of energy worldwide to benefit consumers, the environment, the economy, and national security.
The Alliance’s Green Schools Program, supported by Southern California Edison (SCE), is a comprehensive program for K-12 schools that engages students in project-based, real-world learning, encourages energy-conserving habits, and saves money for school districts by lowering their energy use and costs. The students led a campaign to involve their schools in participating in energy-efficiency activities such as plugging computers into power strips with timers. Sultana students used their diagnostic tools to sleuth out energy waste, and were able to reduce total lighting use by half.
The ASE recognition event focused on the student leadership that achieved the energy savings and included an awards ceremony, displays of energy-efficiency projects at a number of district schools, and a school tour showing the energy-efficiency measures.
