University of British Columbia
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Each year, over 3,100 students living at UBC’s two first year residences, Totem Park and Place Vanier, compete in Aim to Sustain, an exciting three-week energy conservation competition. Launched in 2010, Residence students compete house-to-house over a two to three week period in November to achieve the greatest energy savings in their residences or gain the most participation points.

Using an energy conservation dashboard, students track their building’s energy use, make daily conservation pledges and engage in social media and outreach activities.

Students save energy during the Aim to Sustain competition by:
• Turning out lights in residence rooms and common areas
• Unplugging electronic devices when not in use
• Installing power bars to reduce phantom power
• Washing clothes in cold water and hanging them to dry
• Taking shorter showers to reduce hot water use
• Turning down the heat
• Taking the stairs, and avoiding power-consuming elevators

Activities and resources to promote these behaviors include:
• Dine in the Dark – a ‘lights out’, dining experience in the residence dining halls
• Outreach booths which promote energy and water conservation tips
• Public commitments made by students on how they will conserve water or energy
• Acoustic music nights
• Energy conservation prompts placed around the residences such as shorter shower posters and timers, take the stairs poster, cold water laundry posters, lights out and power management signs

The measured impact of this campaign for the Totem Park Residence, which has real-time energy meters installed at the residence house level, is:

2013 Competition: An average energy savings of 15% across the six measured residence houses at the Totem Park residence complex, with the winning house reducing energy consumption by 21.2%.

2012 Competition: An average energy savings of 23.1% across the six measured residence houses at the Totem Park residence complex, with the winning house reducing energy consumption by 30.2%.

2011 Competition: UBC took first place in the provincial competition, with the winning house reducing energy consumption by 27.6%.

2010 Competition: Winning 2nd place in the Campus Conservation Nationals, a North America-wide competition, residence students conserved average energy savings of 17.4% across the six measured residence houses at the Totem Park residence complex. The winning house reduced energy consumption by 24.1%.

Shut the Sash is an energy conservation campaign focusing on user behavior change in UBC laboratories. Initiated in 2011, as part of the British Columbia (BC) Hydro Workplace Conservation Awareness (WCA) Program, the campaign encourages lab users, including staff, faculty and student researchers, to shut the sashes on fume hoods when not using them as a means to conserve energy. The campaign delivery is based on community-based social marketing principles and consists of four phases: awareness, education, an energy conservation competition between lab groups in the three buildings, and a reinforcement phase that monitors ongoing retention of post-competition behavior.

From February 3 to March 14, 2014, UBC partnered with BC Hydro and FortisBC, BC’s natural gas provider, in Shut the Sash 2014, the third iteration of this six-week energy-saving competition focusing on fume hoods.

The 2014 Shut the Sash competition focused on research labs in three buildings—Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Over 200 researchers — staff, faculty and students - formed 50 teams and competed for two $500 awards, the Grand Prize and the Spirit Challenge, as well as weekly draws for each building, worth $100 each.

Altogether, the participating lab groups in the 2014 Shut the Sash competition achieved an 81 per cent improvement in average sash height. Teams helped to save an estimated 29,500 kWh of electricity, 915 GJ of steam, $7,272 in carbon offset & utility costs, and reduced GHG emissions by 46 tonnes - equivalent to 27 round trip flights from Vancouver to St. John’s Newfoundland.

In the 2013 and 2012 competitions, participating labs saved an estimated 134,000 kWh of electricity and 3,000 GJ of natural gas, and reduced GHG emissions by 130 tonnes—equivalent to 78 round-trip flights from Vancouver to St. John’s, Newfoundland.