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May 11, 2012

UPDATE: "The Watt" has been selected as an innovative project by GOOD Magazine's "Innovate Earth Day for GOOD" Challenge. Head over to GOOD and vote for "The Watt!"

99: The number of red balloons, drinks on the wall, and the number of Kickstarter backers we have! That's right folks, we're almost to 100 Kickstarter backers! Since launching our campaign five days ago, we're reached almost a quarter of our fundraising goal! We're very thankful for those of you who have been able to give. What's even more exciting though has been the outpouring of support for The Watt. We understand that not everyone is able to contribute financially, but you've made your enthusiasm clear with notes of support, Facebook likes, Twitter shares, and Google+ posts. We take this as a sign that energy literacy is high on the agenda, and an issue people are passionate about both domestically and abroad. (Big shout out to the folks who have been translating and reposting our Twitter posts! How awesome! I now know how to say energy literacy in a variety of languages.) We work around the clock here at Focus the Nation because we believe that creating clean energy leaders is the way to the sustainable energy future, and it's clear that you agree!

How can you help fight energy illiteracy?

There's still time to donate! Our campaign is live for 25 more days!
Share "The Watt" Kickstarter campaign with your friends and family via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+
If you're uneasy about this whole "social media" thing, pick up the phone and share the good news.
Test your friends' energy knowledge. If you're scratching your heads over terms like "quads," "parabolic trough," "MMBtu," it's time to get serious about energy literacy! (If you're a college student struggling with energy literacy, sign up for next year's F2A program!)

Thank you for your incredible support of The Watt. Together we can combat energy illiteracy!

May 08, 2012

Kickstarting Energy Literacy

by Ben Jervey

I write. Often. Frequently. Arguably constantly. But out of all the things I’ve written, my latest project might be the biggest game changer (although “I’m a Climate Scientist” brought a new meaning to “nerdy white folks rapping”). You can’t advocate for something you don’t understand, which is why I enthusiastically agreed to write The Watt: An Energy 101 Primer with Focus the Nation. If young people don’t know how to talk about baseload, energy technologies, and transmission lines, they don’t stand a chance at generating feasible solutions. Ideas can never materialize if the physics doesn’t work or the numbers don’t add up.

For something that touches everything, energy is fairly intangible. You can’t see it, you don’t think about it, you just expect it. And when you do flick on the light switch, there’s no notice that says, “This came from coal,” or, “This came from hydro.” The lights just come on, and on your merry way you go. And utilities; who are these people that you pay each month? What exactly do they do? In the age of startups and entrepreneurship, I dare you to find me a college student whose heart is set on working for a utility. When I met with the FTN crew last year, we talked in depth about the challenge before us: Get young people really damn excited about something you can’t see, you don’t notice, and is full of flummoxing abbreviations like Bcfd, FERC, and MMBtu. Great assignment, eh?

But it actually has been. Challenging, yes, but it’s not everyday you get to write “electrical grid” and “age-appropriate beverage” in the same sentence. And it’s working (or at least we think it is). We won’t really know until 5 to 10 years from now, when we start noticing a wave of young professionals who are sincerely dedicated to sustainable energy. The innovator who’s designed a new battery; the CSR specialist who monitors facilities’ consumption; the young champion on the utility board. But in the meantime, we’re seeing students learn concepts they’ve never before seen (because very few college courses teach you how to read those EIA numbers).

So now it’s time to take it to the next level. Right now The Watt is available as a PDF or a really heavy, clunky, spiral-bound book. Nothing about this is sexy. If “energy literacy” is going to be competing with Snooki’s baby for the attention of the Millennial generation, The Watt’s going to need all the sexy it can get. We decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund an interactive e-version of The Watt. Guest video lectures, interactive infographics, scrolling timelines, all the right pieces to combat energy illiteracy.

The reception has been phenomenal. Our backers have been gracious with their finances and enthusiastic with their praise. (We’ve even had one backer suggest we make a movie of The Watt. I’m not quite ready for my screenwriting career, but we’ll put that idea in the queue.) We were the Kickstarter Staff Selection for the week. With 28 days to go, we’re looking for another $18,500. This is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever worked on, and we know good things will come from the young people who pick up The Watt. Grab an “age-appropriate beverage” and take a minute to learn about the electrical grid; I promise it will be worth it.

View Comments (1) Tags: renewable energy Kickstarter The Watt energy literacy education

Apr 30, 2012

Focus Coordinator Selected as WoWE Rudd Mayer Fellow

by Anne Bertucio

Focus the Nation is proud to announce Katrina Montoya as a recipient of the Women of Wind Energy (WoWE) Rudd Mayer Memorial Fellowship. Katrina graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Environmental Science from Oregon State University, but returned to school to pursue her interest of clean energy. Katrina is now in Columbia Gorge Community College’s Renewable Energy Technology program, where she is a member of the Delta Energy Student Club and a Focus Coordinator. Katrina has been working with other Delta Energy Club members to build a community renewable energy project through FTN’s Forums-to-Action program.

WoWE promotes the education, professional development, and advancement of women to achieve a strong diversified workforce and support a robust renewable energy economy. Each year, Women of Wind Energy awards fellowships to women college students or recent graduates to attend the annual American Wind Energy Association WINDPOWER conference. The fellowship honors wind industry pioneer Rudd Mayer of Boulder, Colorado, who passed away in 2002. The Rudd Mayer Memorial Fellowships support women to participate in WINDPOWER, attending seminars on current wind energy issues, viewing state-of-the-art technology, meeting women and men in the wind energy field, and connecting with employers about potential internships or permanent positions.

Focus the Nation is a proud partner of WoWE and collaborates to support young women seeking to increase their knowledge of wind power and enter the wind energy sector, whether as an Innovator, Storyteller, Politico, or Technician, like Katrina.

View Comments (0) Tags: Oregon wind Columbia Gorge Community College Women of Wind Energy fellowship

Apr 27, 2012

For the Love of Sport

by Anne Bertucio

I love sport. When I’m not working with our Focus the Nation partners or helping to guide F2A projects, I’m usually breaking a sweat or cheering on one of my beloved teams (Go Timbers!). So when Sasha told me that the University of Oregon F2A team wanted to concentrate on sports and energy, I was thrilled.

The University of Oregon (UO) athletic program has a long history of excellence and is located in a city that is affectionately nick-named “Track Town, USA.” UO is also a leader in sustainability and noted for its environmental initiatives. So where do these overlap? How can the UO apply its success in sustainability with its excellence in sport? And why does it matter?

Luckily, Focus Coordinators James Walton and Weston Cooper were not pondering these questions alone. The Green Sports Alliance is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help sports teams, venues, and leagues enhance their environmental performance. GSA was founded in 2010 and has already reached 13 leagues and over 90 venues and teams. With the help of GSA and the UO Athletic Department, the UO F2A team made a clear case for incorporating sustainability and sports at the collegiate level at last night’s “Focus the Nation Sports and Sustainability Summit.”

“Without a clean environment, athletic achievements are hindered,” Walton’s opening words that would resonate throughout the forum. Sporting events are a major part of the University’s culture, but are also a major impact on their carbon footprint. Stadium lights. Water bottles. Beverage containers. Scoreboards. Televisions. Loudspeakers. Refreshments. Transportation. These quickly add up in the course of a 4-hour game, or 3 day Olympic Track Trial. But with 58% of people paying attention to sports, and only 18% to science, these events also represent a great opportunity to change citizen behaviors.

The UO Athletic Department takes sustainability seriously and has conducted a full sustainability report of their current operations. They know where they are improving, and they know where they need to make improvements. Now they just need the creativity to generate solutions. Which is where the innovative, dynamic students come in. How can we change behavior and reduce the energy consumption of sports operations without impacting the sporting experience? It’s a big challenge, but as GSA Executive Director Martin Tull remarked in his keynote last night, the energy and problem-solving creativity of the UO students is inspiring.

The power of sport has overcome discrimination, broken stereotypes, and united countries. Solving our energy crisis? This may well become sport’s next accomplishment.

View Comments (0) Tags: innovator sustainability F2A University of Oregon sports

Apr 18, 2012

"Sunday School and Sustainable Energy" from Alabama Coordinator Bailie Clark

by Bailie Clark

The University of Alabama team has been working hard on their action plan. Focus Coordinator Bailie Clark wrote about the importance of sustainable energy in UA's paper, The Crimson White:

It’s a parable many of us have heard since childhood: a hard-working man saves money his entire life to leave his two sons with a sizeable inheritance for when he dies, but one son, in an ultimate act of disrespect, decides he wants his share of the inheritance before his father’s death. According to tradition, if a son claims his inheritance before due time, he must be permanently cast out of his community. With his fortune, the son gladly exchanges his life in the village for one of frivolous spending which leaves him penniless. Left with no other option, he returns to his father and asks forgiveness. The father unexpectedly welcomes his estranged son back with open arms and a big party.

Over the past few billion years, life has flourished and died on a scale we cannot even begin to imagine. Comparable to the father’s careful saving, these organisms accumulate and are compressed over thousands of years, eventually resulting in a carbon-rich material. When humans realized how profitable this inheritance could be, we started squandering it without a thought to its transiency.

However, we are now at a point in our history where we pull our father’s inheritance out of our pockets and realize there is simply not enough. The age-old tale does not describe this moment in the irresponsible son’s life, but I imagine he first dug deeper in his pockets thinking, “There must be more. This cannot be all that is left.” In the same way, scraping what little oil we can find is costing more energy than it’s worth — sometimes only breaking even.

Apr 16, 2012

Committing to Green Power in the Tennessee Valley

by Josh Baker

Big props goes out to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for receiving the Presidential Award from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)! Focus The Nation's own Focus Coordinators Nick Alderson and Maria Rosales, along with UT's Sustainability Manager, Gordie Bennet accepted the award last week on behalf of the University. The Presidential Award is given to the largest purchaser of green power from TVA. According to the Tennessee Today:

The university purchased nine megawatt hours of green power from TVA last year. That is the equivalent of eliminating the yearly greenhouse gas emissions from 1,535 passenger vehicles, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Green power purchases allow consumers to help ensure renewable energy from wind, solar, and landfill gas is added to TVA’s power supply.

TVA and local power companies, working in cooperation with the environmental community, developed Green Power Switch as a way to bring cleaner, greener power to the Tennessee Valley, explains Jenny Wright, product manager for TVA’s Green Power Switch.

Read more here about the program and award. While you're at it, check out this recent blog by Maria herself, talking about the next big push that students are making as they move Tennessee towards a cleaner and more energy efficient future. And if you're in the Knoxville area, check out their Gettin' Green, Savin' Green: Energy Efficiency at UT forum on April 17th or follow what they are doing at their F2A page.

View Comments (0) Tags: F2A Tennessee Knoxville Green Power TVA

Apr 06, 2012

Let's Raise a Million!!

by Maria Rosales

What would you do if you had a million dollars? It's not often that students in college are faced with that question, but this is what we're trying to accomplish.

At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, students have been lucky enough to push for sustainability on campus.Too often, students across the county spend time fighting against dirty energy, but here in Tennessee we've been able to focus our efforts on creating solutions to add renewable energy to the grid. Through student-led campaigns, we have a green fee that has invested in sustainable projects on campus. This green fee has allowed us to invest in on-site renewable energy, water conservation, green power, and other projects. This is all because students are putting their money where their mouth is: they are paying money from their tuition for a clean energy future. Together, students have made our university the largest green power purchaser in the state of Tennessee. I’m always really excited to tell people that we are the ones pushing the shift to a clean energy economy.

Although we have done a lot of great things, we have a long ways to go. This summer, we decided that our green fee wasn't enough. If we wanted to be leaders in sustainability and "Make Orange Green" we needed to step up and make some real investments. We’re working with administrators to get them to sign the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, a nationwide campaign where universities set up a revolving fund to collectively raise a billion dollars towards energy efficiency.

Our students at the University of Tennessee are doing their part by trying to raise a million dollars! I don’t know about you, but there aren't many twentysomethings who talk in terms of millions. Since then, we have been meeting with more students, talked to our chancellor, and met with many administrators. Together, we are trying to get a million dollars to spend in energy efficiency projects. Through these projects, we would be able to reduce our energy consumption which would equal a reduction in utility bills. The savings would then go back into a fund to be invested into more energy efficiency. Since meeting with our administrators, we decided that we needed to bring everyone together. So, on April 17th, through the Forums-to-Action program, we're hosting an event called, "Gettin' Green, Savin' Green: Energy Efficiency at UT". Through this forum, we hope to bring everyone together to discuss the need for energy efficiency and what it would look like to have a revolving fund at the University of Tennessee. We hope that this will bring everyone together so we can raise a million!

Maria Rosales is a 2011 Recharge! Delegate and 2011-12 F2A Focus Coordinator at University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

View Comments (0) Tags: F2A Energy Efficiency Tennessee Billion Dollar Green Challenge Knoxville

Apr 06, 2012

"Oregon Schools Present Solutions to Clean Energy"

by Anne Bertucio

Focus the Nation teams in Oregon are thriving in the Forums-to-Action program! Oregon Campus Compact covers the great work of these student teams on their latest blog.

"Through a partnership with Focus the Nation, Columbia Gorge Community College, University of Portland, and the University of Oregon are inspiring innovative solutions for clean energy. These campuses are hosting Forums-to-Action, a program that empowers student leaders to organize their campus and community to discuss, develop, and implement sustainable energy ..." (read more at Oregon Campus Compact)

View Comments (0) Tags: Oregon University of Portland F2A Campus Compact CGCC University of Oregon

Apr 04, 2012

University of Utah's Tom Melburn & the Solar Ivy Interview

by Sasha Tenzin

Great interview with our current 2011-2012 Focus Coordinator and ReCharge! 2011 alum, Tom Melburn, on his University of Utah solar ivy project. Thanks to Katia Blackburn from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute for her skillful reporting!

Tom is wild about solar installations, check out the University of Utah Forums-to-Action project page for more info on what's next for this rising young leader!

View Comments (0) Tags: solar Forums-to-Action University of Utah Tom Melburn

Mar 21, 2012

A View From Headquarters

by Josh Baker

How time flies when you’re talking about adding clean energy to the grid and tackling energy efficiency. It's hard to believe that nearly a half of a year has passed since I started working with our cohort of 2011-12 Forums-to-Action (F2A) teams. As everyone in our Oregon headquarters and our Focus teams across the country begin to transition from talking about roadblocks and solutions to clean energy issues in local communities to actually implementing solution-oriented projects, it’s amazing to think how far some teams have already come.

At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, students are on the verge of securing funding for countless energy efficiency and clean energy projects for years to come. Students at the University of Utah are busy bringing an additional 25kW solar array to campus and the Mississippi State Focus team is preparing to launch an energy audit program on campus. In the far Northeastern part of the country, community members, staff, and students at Northern Maine Community College are exploring and expanding the potential for biomass energy. Things are looking well across the Focus the Nation landscape.

The state of clean energy leadership is clearly seen in Madison, Wisconsin. Just six months ago I was having my first meeting with the Focus Coordinators (FCs) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now their team, Focus Wisconsin, is on the verge of proposing an innovative project that will push their community to become more energy efficient and serve as a model for future programs at other colleges and communities in their state and around the nation.

It hasn't just been the leadership among the Focus Wisconsin team that has propelled the project forward though. Focus Coordinators Joel Charles, a Master of Public Health student who has his feet planted in the Politico and Storyteller quadrant and Kristine Engel, an Innovator and Technician on the way to receiving a Mechanical Engineering degree, have prioritized collaboration between their campus and community at every stage of the F2A program.

Now other leaders on campus and off-campus have joined them to see how to best to address their primary roadblocks and solutions that were discussed at their clean energy forum, The Negawatt Summit: Catalyzing Energy Conservation In Our Community.

Along with leadership from the University of Wisconsin’s We Conserve program, local utility Madison Gas & Electric, and input from groups like the Madison Green Property Owners Apartment Association, Focus on Energy, and WISPIRG Energy Service Corps, clean energy collaboration and leadership in Madison are resulting in a program to incentivize energy efficiency programs in off-campus apartment complexes. The pieces are starting to be put together on how to bring together multi-family housing unit property owners who are willing to make certain green/energy efficient commitments with students who are looking for greener properties and willing to make certain commitments about behavior change.

Though there is a lot more planning, discussions, and program development to occur before a the project officially gets launched, so much has already happened since the F2A program was launched in Wisconsin last fall. As a Focus Coach watching all this happen from our Oregon headquarters, it’s rewarding and exciting to know that projects and collaborations like these are happening, not just in Wisconsin, but all across the country. It’s exciting to know that we’re only a half a year into this year’s F2A program cycle and our Focus teams will continue to develop and implement solution-oriented programs in the country. Even more exciting is the fact that in less than six months, we’ll have an entire new cohort of teams starting the program pushing clean energy solutions in their local communities. I know I’ll be watching carefully to see how Focus Wisconsin’s and other projects develops. I hope you will be too!

View Comments (0) Tags: renewable energy F2A leadership Wisconsin Energy Energy Efficiency Coaching Collaboration Projects

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