Ask more of your janitor, ask more of the 5th grader, and then ask them to work together.
An initiative in Germany, called 50/50, motivates students to transform the energy profile of their schools. The changes are modest and realistic. The methods of conservation are traditional and inexpensive. But they pay. If a school can decrease its annual energy needs by at least 10%, the savings is split in half between the students and the school district.
The average participating school saves 100 MW of heating, 10,000 kWh of electricity, 40T of CO2 and earns 5,000€ (when a total of 10,000€ in energy costs was saved).
Students and janitors work as a team. Five to ten students tour their school with the janitor and an energy auditor. Together they develop a plan for implementation, and then communicate the plan to the rest of the school with creative messages. The school pays for cheap investments like a boiler blanket. Any larger investment requests are submitted to the school district, but large investments like new windows are not actually the point.
“We really want to focus on user behavior,” said Almuth Tharan, of the Unabhängiges Institut für Umweltfragen (UfU) e.V., one of the national project coordinators.
One hundred and fifty schools in Berlin participate in the program. Annually, the 50/50 program saves €600,000 citywide. With a population of 3 million, the 150 participating schools represent just ¼ of all schools who could participate. The program is nearly 20 years old.
50/50 is just one piece of energy and resource education. In German schools this begins at an early age. Students are taught solar energy and resource conservation through a variety of locally developed curriculum measures. Pre-fab kits are widely deployed. An energy suitcase with a digital thermometer and a light meter help 5th graders learn measurement and graphing. “Renewables in a Box,” brings big concepts to even small pupils: the Sunshine Suitcase visits Kindergartners too.
To learn more about 50/50 in Germany: http://www.ufu.de/media/content/files/UfU_Englisch/Climate_Protection/Fifty-fifty_Energy_Education.pdf
