Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition? You have five (5) weeks to earn as many points as you can to be named the Renew Our Schools champion. The competition can be fierce, but we know your students have got this. Here’s a breakdown of how the scoring works.
How Will My School Earn Points?
By completing School Energy Actions. Every competition, regardless of level and age group, offers over 25 School Energy Actions (SEAs) to choose from. All SEAs bring STEM to life in the classroom and support Energy education. At the Star level of competition, we use Energy Savings to break a tie. So it’s important to implement energy saving behaviors in your school during competition – because you never know who will come from behind no matter how big your lead!
Energy Savings
If you compete at the Star level, you’ll see your energy use in real-time on your eGauge or other real time energy monitor. Energy saving behaviors in your school will reduce consumption. Turning off lights, removing unnecessary appliances, setting computers to power save mode, and changing building programming schedules–are all examples of things students can do to increase Energy Savings. All of the data you enter in your Energy Data Journal will be used to determine your baseline energy usage, and your class will compare that to your energy usage after implementing energy saving behaviors. Yes, it will be harder to achieve energy savings year after year of participation, but every class identifies something different. You’ll be amazed at what your students come up with!
School Energy Actions
There are endless ways to earn School Energy Action points in Renew Our Schools! We provide more than 25 opportunities to accumulate prizes and are always expanding our curriculum to add more.
A couple of the many options include:
Energy Savings Weekend
Determine your school’s average daily energy use when the building is unoccupied and see if you can reduce your unoccupied building load by 10%. Earn points then try it again for an active school day!
Local Energy Expert
Invite a local energy or sustainability expert or organization to speak at your school. Tell us about your chosen expert, take pictures of the event, and summarize the event. A fun and informative way to earn points!
Competition Prizes
Everyone is a winner in the Renew Our Schools competition. The ultimate prize is having a planet that we can proudly leave to subsequent generations. However, something a little more tangible for the students and for the highest scoring team seems like fun too. It is a competition after all. The prize pool in each competition varies depending on the number of schools competing and additional funding sources.
At the Spark level, we almost always offer a free eGauge install to the winning school, plus free entry into your first Star level competition after installation. How could an eGauge impact your students energy education?
Star competitions always have a cash prize pool. Renew Our Schools puts $50 from every paid participation fee into the prize bucket. As such, most Star competitions have a grand prize of at least $500 (10 competitors x $50 each). All Star winners are invited to participate in a future competition free of charge. How could $500 support your classroom?
We use language like “almost always” and “most” or “at least” because we are constantly hustling to build bigger prize pools. Our team works hard and we frequently receive additional funding and sponsorships that allow us to expand the prize pool. We don’t always know if we will have additional prize funding until the competition is underway, so it’s best to come out of the gate hot, because you never know if we will throw another $20,000 your way if you win.