VCU Wins Inaugural Campus ConseRVAtion Nationals

By Megan Schmidt

In February, Virginia Commonwealth University captured the inaugural Campus ConseRVAtion Nationals energy challenge, defeating the University of Richmond after three weeks of friendly competition.

On Friday, a commemorative plaque was hung and students celebrated their accomplishment at a pizza party in the Cary and Belvidere Apartments.

“UR was serious competition, but with the help of all of the students in our dorms, we were able to edge them out to win the competition," said Parker Long, sustainability reporting and outreach coordinator at VCU.

The plaque, fashioned from a reused solar panel and engraved with the competition’s information and VCU’s logo, will hang in the residence hall until next year’s competition. Room was left in the design to add logos from either Richmond school for the next five years depending on which university wins.

Campus ConseRVAtion Nationals ran from Feb. 3 to Feb. 24 and included residence halls from both VCU and the University of Richmond. As the competition neared its end, the lead VCU held for the entirety of the race diminished, but VCU ultimately held on, edging past Richmond with just a 0.5-percent difference in energy savings.

Within the campus, VCU challenged its students to compete among themselves by ranking the residence halls’ energy use individually. Residents of the Cary and Belvidere Apartments managed to save 10.9 percent, making it the most efficient dorm on campus. Ackell Residence Center finished second with a 7.2-percent reduction.

"Overall, VCU was able to reduce our dorms' energy use by 7.4 percent compared to February 2012," said Wyatt Carpenter, an intern with VCU’s Office of Sustainability. "That might not seem like a big number, but when you consider how many residence halls we have, numbers like that really add up to real savings for our university and for Richmond."

UR hosted a kick-off event at which students committed to save electricity by turning off lights, computers and other electronics when not in use. Throughout the competition, regular updates kept the university informed of its place in the competition and motivated students to keep going as VCU’s lead began to shrink.

“It was a great competition and very exciting to share a common goal of energy conservation with our friends at VCU,” said Megan Zanella-Litke, sustainability coordinator at University of Richmond. “We look forward to next year’s competition. I think both schools learned a great deal about what we can do better next year,”

Throughout the competition, students were encouraged to conserve energy by unplugging electronics or turning off power strips. The competition also educated students on using natural light whenever possible and making sure to turn electric lights off when they left a room. The focus of the competition was to raise awareness about the energy students consume every day and how that electricity use affects the entire university. VCU and UR’s friendly competition is meant to act as an example for all of Richmond.

"We're excited to continue this competition with UR next year and have already started planning ways to make it even better," said Long.


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