University of California, Santa Barbara
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

This is a dorm vs. dorm energy conservation competition during which on-campus residences learn energy conservation tips and tools. To measure the impact of the campaign, the university compares dorm energy consumption during the months before the competition to the month of the competition, in addition to comparing energy use in prior years. There was a decrease in the amount of energy used in the months of the last competition.

In 2013 611 students participated in the energy conservation competition and 15,059 KWH of electricity was saved resulting in 10,300 (lbs) of avoided CO2e emissions.

LabSYNC aims to help campus labs assess and document their sustainable laboratory practices and achieve recognition for the steps that they have taken to be environmentally conscious while conducting their research. During the LabSYNC process, a team of student interns and a professional staff member from the LabRATS Program interview the lab manager or defacto lab manager, complete a tour of the lab, perform an energy audit, and develop a set of recommendations. The recommendations will come in the form of a report, a presentation to be given at a lab group meeting, and a scoring sheet showing which actions are already occurring and which actions could be considered for the future. After the initial data collection, lab occupants are informed which measures could easily be implemented before the end of the assessment, allowing the lab to get a higher score immediately. After any initial steps that the lab chooses to implement are put into action, the final report is developed which includes potential future actions and resources to implement those actions.

The impact of the LabSYNC assessment changes with each department because we tailor our recommendations each time. That said, our best practices website catalogs the impact of each action included in our standard recommendations: http://www.sustainability.ucsb.edu/labrats-best-practices/ Simply select any topic area, and then choose an action of interest. For each action, a page will appear that describes the problem, solution (including references to useful resources), benefits, and costs. We have found that by having several achievement levels, we can incentivize the labs we work with to take immediate action before the final report is even finished. Since launching this revision of our program, every lab that we have worked with has implemented at least two new measures.