Energy Bowl targets
dorm conservation

// news / daily - january 19, 2006

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=18986&repository=0001_article
written by Mandy Kovach

The efforts of Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) to raise environmental awareness and promote practical ways for the University to achieve sustainable and efficient environmental practices culminated in last January’s first installment of the Great Annual Stanford Energy Bowl and Water Derby.

In the hopes mirroring this success, this year’s competition kicked off at the beginning of the quarter and will last through February. Each undergraduate house will compete to save the most energy and water for various prizes, including energy or water-saving technology installed at their residences.

“The Energy Bowl and Water Derby is an inter-dorm competition that records the energy and water usage for each house or dorm and compares that to the amounts used during the same period last year,” said sophomore Nastassia Patin, the financial manager of SSS. “There are two categories within the competition. The first consists of all dorms — including Flo Mo, Stern, Wilbur, FroSoCo — as well as Kimball, Lantana and Toyon. The second is made of Row and cluster houses, which include Yost and East.”

In each category, the dorm with the largest percentage decrease wins prizes for each resident in the dorm or house. According to Patin, last year’s winner was FloMo, and each of its students won a mug. This year, the winning residents may find T-shirts waiting for them at the finish line — in addition to the free installation of an energy-saving appliance, she said.

Patin said she is very excited about the strides the project has made in the last year.

“I’ve taken part in some major sustainability projects,” she said. “I am very enthusiastic, and I think this is one of the best things our club does.”

Sophomore Gregory Lee, an SSS member in his second year of working on the competition, said the group has met its original goal to raise individual awareness of energy use.

“I think the competition — where it’s properly publicized — adds awareness and accessibility to the problems of energy and water use,” Lee said. “I think that it shows people that their personal energy and water use actually has an effect, even though they never see the bill for it. In this way, we get people to be more conscious of their personal use, which is the first step toward using less.”

However, Lee added that he’s also ready to see the competition expand even more in the next several years.

“That said, there are definitely some parts of campus that miss out on the competition,” he said. “Last year, some dorms heard about the competition once in dorm meeting, and then forgot about it, or didn’t hear about it at all. The key is we need people to think about the competition for its duration. When that happens, the competition is a success. I think that that happened in many places around campus last year, and so I would label the competition a success. But I also think that we can do better and reach more people.”

Though participating in the competition for the first time, freshmen members of SSS said they were also enthusiastic about the event.

Freshman Kristen Barta, a member of SSS and resident of Branner, said that while she has never worked for a project similar to the Energy Bowl and Water Derby, she thinks it has the potential to be a great success.

“I’ve never been involved in planning an event on the same scale as the derby, simply because I previously have never encountered students so dedicated and motivated to take on such a challenge,” she said. “It’s very exciting to see the great things that such a small group of students can organize and bring to life, as well as the impact and change that come of them.”