University of Dayton
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

The University of Dayton owns and maintains over 400 single family homes, duplexes, and multi-unit apartment facilities. We house students in these units through our housing lottery. Students living in these units do not pay for their utilities; they pay one flat fee to the university. During a campus forum on energy use, student reported that increased information would help them to adopt sustainable behaviors, and thus, the GreenHouse Effect was born. Each month, the utility bills for each residence are combined onto one statement which explains energy use in terms of kilowatt hours, ccf of natural gas, cost, and carbon impact. In addition, the statements show how each house has performed against an energy model. The energy models for each residence were created by students from our School of Engineering and take into consideration the unique characteristics of the house and 5 years of its utility history. In this way, we can compare this year's residents of one house to previous year's residents of the same house, eliminating any confusion about pitting newer houses against older houses. Finally, these statements also show how each residence has performed compared to the rest of its block, and the neighborhood on the whole.

During the 5 month pilot of this project in 2010-2011, a total of almost $21,000 was saved according to the predicted expenditures generated by our energy models. In subsequent years, a total of more than $100,000 in savings has been achieved.