Most energy consumers likely want more energy efficient and sustainable consumer choices, but many simply do not know enough about their options to make informed decisions. Teaching energy consumers about how to change their energy habits and the clean energy options available to them can add up to big impacts that can decrease their energy bills and contribute to stronger energy grids. Energy efficiency education is becoming increasingly important, and the onus is often on energy utilities to show their customers that their little steps make a real difference.
Educating the Community through Outreach
Illustrating the benefits of energy efficiency through community outreach programs may be one of the most powerful ways to create more sustainable communities. These programs can be tailored to meet the needs of individual communities, illustrating the impacts that mean the most to their residents. Through these programs, customers can be converted into lifelong practitioners of sustainable energy.
How Communities Benefit From Energy Efficiency Education
Getting your community on board with energy efficiency education initiatives delivers a lot of great benefits. It helps reduce energy demand, taking strain off the energy grid and lowering consumers energy costs. It also helps energy utilities meet clean energy initiatives. And, at the end of the day, it helps create a more sustainable future for the community at large.
Reducing Energy Demand
Reducing energy demand helps control usage during peak demand times, reducing the likelihood of outages and strain on the grid. It also benefits the utility’s capacity management by creating a more stable demand profile, which makes it easier to plan and allocate resources. Educating customers on simple ways they can reduce their usage helps ensure their service continues, uninterrupted.
Making Clean Energy Initiatives Work
The ability to make more informed decisions based on reduced demand also helps utilities make their clean energy initiatives successful and comply with regulatory demands. Reduced usage allows for easier integration of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, paving the way for a resilient, renewable energy-powered grid in the future.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
In addition to benefiting energy utilities directly, energy efficiency education helps energy customers adopt more energy-wise habits that can lower individual energy costs, a direct benefit that consumers feel in their pocketbook. Energy efficiency education shows customers this direct line and allows them to sustain their beneficial habits. These sustainable choices help make consumer’s everyday needs more affordable, and also helps ensure a more sustainable, reliable grid into the future. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits customers can expect when making energy conscious decisions.
Cost Savings
The most immediate benefit energy customers see when they make better energy consumption choices is smaller energy bills. Even making modest changes like switching to LED bulbs and unplugging the devices when not in use can save hundreds of dollars annually. For commercial customers with large campuses, these cost savings can multiply exponentially. Aside from those immediate savings, making energy-efficient upgrades can also provide access to tax credits, rebates, and other financial incentives that can be powerful drivers for a large segment of your customer base.
Improved Comfort
The ability to heat and cool homes and offices at a lower price point also makes indoor spaces more comfortable. By making energy wise decisions, customers can save enough money to keep their homes and offices at more ideal temperatures.
Increased Property Values
Home buyers have come to expect that the homes they purchase are energy efficient. Many would even consider negotiating the cost of an inefficient home or office. Again, with a large office building, these inefficiencies can cost thousands of dollars annually in wasted energy.
Quality of Life
Each of these benefits work together to provide an enhanced quality of life. Reducing energy consumption leads to cleaner air and water, and makes communities healthier in the long run. With all of these benefits of helping energy consumers and communities consume less energy, what is the best way to reach consumers with energy efficiency education? The answer to this question is quite simple, start the education young.
The Importance of Educating Youth on Energy Efficiency
When it comes to energy efficiency education the biggest return on investment is found in focusing education resources on young people. This benefit is twofold. Learning energy-wise habits when young is the best way to sustain those habits into adulthood. As future consumers, teaching young people now how to adopt beneficial habits helps ensure those habits continue throughout their lifetimes. Young people, however, are also great influencers within their homes today, helping spread behavior change into their communities and sustain that change now and into the future.
Getting Youth on Board
As mentioned above, focusing educational outreach resources on the young people in your community helps those resources go further. Not only do youth show a propensity for environmentally friendly behavior, but they are also strong advocates for beneficial behaviors in their homes. Plus, learning good habits early on is the most effective way of ensuring that those habits stick. Multiple studies, as reported by Psychology Today, show that habits learned before age nine tend to be the most sticky. Let’s look at the benefits associated with reaching young people with energy efficiency education.
Young Brains are Primed to Learn
It has long been understood that young minds are more malleable than older ones. Since young people are still in the process of understanding and adapting to a wide range of different environments and interactions, that flexibility, or plasticity, is necessary. This makes early childhood the perfect time to introduce important lessons intended to last a lifetime, and a crucial target for the investment of environmental education resources.
Habits Are Easier to Form Young
Another reason it’s important to get people started on sustainable choices young is that it is much easier to form habits at those ages. According to a 2015 Brown University study, many habits and routines are unlikely to change after age 9. This includes things like household chores and habits that will help bolster our energy grids and support the environment.
Young People Genuinely Care about the Environment
Young people will often show greater enthusiasm than older generations for doing their part in becoming more sustainable and protecting the environment. A number of recent studies support this. Here are some compelling examples. In 2021, the Children’s People and Nature Survey reached out to a nationally representative sample of young people aged 8-15 to report on their thoughts about environmental protection. 78% of respondents reported that looking after the environment was important to them, while 81% reported that they would like to do more to look after the environment. That same year, the People’s Climate Vote, which was organized by The United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford, polled respondents in 50 countries, covering 56% of the world’s population. Of those respondents under age 18, 69% responded that climate change is a global emergency. The results of the 2024 report showed that concern is only growing. Young people are increasingly demonstrating their concern for the environment through action, as well as their willingness to adopt sustainable behaviors to improve it. These traits make them ideal stewards for influencing sustainable behaviors in their own homes.
Students Influence Behaviors in Their Homes
The Children’s People and Nature Survey also found that 46% of respondents reported that they did not think adults were doing enough, up from 39% a year prior. One of the most effective things those students can do to influence adult behaviors is to begin in the home by educating their own families. By focusing energy efficiency educational resources on young people, you are not only reaching students but their families as well, allowing those resources to stretch further and do more.
Community Programming for Schools
So what is the best way to reach young people with energy efficiency education? How do you make the lessons and messaging stick long after the information is given? Through creative engagement strategies and story-based learning techniques, students are given the best opportunity to not only learn about energy efficiency, but be inspired to bring that messaging into their homes and remember the lesson long after the initial engagement. At NTC, we offer a wide range of educational outreach programming to impact your community. Here are some of the most impactful examples for energy efficiency education.
Live Theater Performances
Live theater performances have captivated audiences for thousands of years. They allow audiences to connect with characters and stories who can then show problems that can be solved and acted upon. Live performances also allow a way to experience these stories with peers as a shared experience, which makes them more memorable and impactful. These two facts make live theater performances exceptional teaching tools. Illustrating the potential benefits and consequences of our decisions through interactive performances drives home the messaging in a way that few other forms of media can. These shared experiences also connect us with our local communities, driving the importance of adopting the beneficial habits that have the power to affect every one of us.
Livestream Events
Another impactful way we bring live events into the classroom is through live streamed events. This provides many similar benefits to live theater performances, without the need for the venues that not all schools have access to.
How Energy Efficiency Education Improves Communities
The reasons to get young people learning about energy efficiency from an early age are numerous. Most of all, it can strengthen communities and prepare students for future challenges.
Long-term Environmental Impact
Reaching students while they are developing lifelong habits can impact the energy transition not only today but well into the future by creating future energy consumers who are more knowledgeable about sustainable practices. That, in turn, can have profound impacts on the environment and the future of energy consumption.
Prepares Students for Jobs of the Future
The jobs within the energy sector are changing as more clean energy resources come online and grids are upgraded. The deeper understanding of energy production and the ways in which usage can be limited also helps students prepare for these future jobs and see opportunities within the energy sector, making them more likely to fill these expanding roles.
Stronger Energy Grids
As energy sources and uses grow in numbers and complexity, energy efficiency plays an increasing role in ensuring a strong energy grid. Building an understanding within youth of how energy resources are used and why energy efficiency is important helps ensure that the energy grid continues to be strong and sustainable.
Engaging Students in Energy Conservation
Schools are an ideal place for engaging students in energy conservation initiatives. These initiatives teach students about energy efficiency, how to adopt beneficial behaviors, and inspire them to become energy efficiency champions in their communities. Overall, there are many creative and action-based programs that can reach students and help them lower their energy consumption, that of their schools, and of their families.
Student Energy Conservation Programs
There are many initiatives that schools can participate in to teach students about energy efficiency. NTC, for example, has partnered with utilities to promote community specific programs at the school level.
Power Down Fridays
Many schools encourage classroom energy conservation by asking students and staff to turn off all electronics, including lights, computers, and other devices at the end of the week. It is a great way of illustrating the amount of energy that can be saved through a few simple steps.
Renewable Energy Projects
A growing number of schools are also investing in solar panels or wind turbines to generate their own renewable energy. Involving the students provides big benefits to the local energy grid over the long run.
Green Schools Programs
Green schools programs focus on educating students about green building standards for educational institutions as well as sustainability. The aim is to create healthier, eco-friendly school design and show students how to mitigate their impacts on the environment.
Energy Savings Competitions
Energy savings competitions are an initiative that encourages students to take action and helps show them the impact of those actions to drive home energy efficiency messaging. Energy audits show students where savings are possible, and they are encouraged to make the biggest difference through incentives or rewards.
Incorporating Energy Efficiency into Curriculum
Each of these programs inspires students to get involved, but by supplementing these initiatives with energy efficiency education that fits into regular curriculum and grade-level standards is a powerful way to extend the learning beyond the initial event. The events and programs help students understand the “why” associated with their actions and supplemental education materials and lessons help reinforce that learning and help students incorporate their actions into their everyday lives.
Funding Energy Efficiency Projects in Schools
Most schools do not have the resources to fund energy efficiency education initiatives and often rely on outreach programming within their communities, and in particular, from their energy utility to bring this programming to schools within their service territories. Energy utilities and schools create a relationship model that provides much-needed education and funding that can improve the ability for students to learn important energy efficiency behavior and for utilities to operate successfully both now and in the future.
Grants and Government Programs
There are a number of grants and government programs that help provide access to funding for these programs, and partnering with them can make energy efficiency education attainable for underserved communities. These programs and grants for schools are offered through private foundations and nonprofits, as well as federal and state agencies.
Community Partnerships
Community partnerships also offer ways to fund energy efficiency education for students. There are a number of community organizations and other groups who are available to partner to further these initiatives and make them more accessible to a larger group of students.
Reach Out to Learn More
NTC offers a range of programming tailored to meet the needs of individual institutions. Our energy efficiency education programming utilizes story-based creative engagement techniques as a sticky method of teaching good habits and inspiring sustainable behavior changes. Reach out for more information on how to sponsor a customized education outreach program for the youth in your community.
