Stuart, Peery halls compete to reduce energy and water

The battle is on between residents of Stuart and Peery Halls as they compete to see which group can reduce the highest percentage of electricity and water usage in their building over a two-week period.

The competition began Nov. 1 and concludes Nov. 15.

The residence halls competition is a warm-up for a larger contest early next year. In February, RU on-campus residents will compete in the 2014 Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN), a water and electricity reduction competition program for college and universities around the world.

In the inaugural 2010 CCN, RU students finished third in the electricity reduction competition and eighth in the water-reduction battle.

CCN is jointly organized by the U.S. Green Building Council, Lucid, National Wildlife Federation and the Alliance to Save Energy.

For the current on-campus battle, live results for Stuart and uploaded results for Peery can be viewed online on the RU Building Dashboard.

Stuart is one of two campus buildings to house an energy dashboard, a digital scoreboard displaying real-time data on its usage of gallons of water, kilowatts of electricity, equivalent BTUs of steam and carbon dioxide emissions as well as estimated energy costs.

"Using the dashboard, students can look at their hall’s water and electricity results, connect to their hall using Facebook, learn energy conserving tips and make commitments," said RU Sustainability Coordinator Julio Stephens.

A grant to RU from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund in 2012 supports an extensive energy audit review of campus energy generation possibilities, as well as the installation of the energy dashboards in Stuart and Floyd halls.

RU is committed to reducing energy consumption and costs and building upon sustainability efforts across campus.

Earlier this year, for the fourth year consecutive year, RU was recognized by The Princeton Review for its commitment to building and maintaining a sustainable, environmentally friendly campus.

The Princeton Review included RU in its "Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition." Radford has been listed every year since the green colleges guide's first publication in 2010 in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Center for Green Schools.

Nov 6, 2013