At the close of a successful 2022-23 school year, NTC’s CEO Margaret Eames and President Pat Rowan wanted to give the staff a summer of purposeful restoration. They started Power Down Fridays, a concerted effort to decrease energy consumption as a company while also investing in the work/life balance of NTC staff. In short, they gave everyone half-day Fridays with remote mornings, while also instilling a full company shutdown of all technology and adjusting thermostat settings at 12noon every Friday for 12 weeks.

The first-year results blew us away – Across NTC in the summer of 2023, we found a combined decrease of 29.72% kWh usage from the previous summer (2022) utility meters.

You can read more about 2023’s experience here.

Rowan decided to double down for the summer of 2024 and see if we’d see the same kind data or if part of the results had to do with the newness of the idea. Afterall, we were really only talking about decreasing 4 or 5 hours a week and installing a stricter power-down method to our technology and building units.

And so…NTC staff enjoyed another Power Down Friday summer. Same rules, same conceit. But this year, we would compare data from the summer of 2023 to the summer of 2024.

How to explain the increased reduction

If the rules of Power Down Fridays didn’t change nor did the sites or staff size of NTC, why the increased success in kWh reduction?

Personal awareness has got to be factor. The results of Year 1 Power Down Fridays made every single employee highly aware of the kind of impact their personal habits can make to the big picture. Taking the step to actually shutdown your computer or check the lights in and out of your working space are tiny steps that add to the whole. Opting to replenish office supplies with energy-efficient monitors and servers when the opportunity came up impacted the second year’s results. Hyping up our colleagues to beat our results from last year as collective certainly affected everyone’s commitment to the habits that would help secure that win.

In the end, energy is consumed by people and people who make decisions about buildings, infrastructure, vehicles and technology. If people can integrate better energy habits into their mindset, the impact would be phenomenal on a global scale.

How energy efficiency makes a huge impact

Is contributing to the fight against climate change actually as easy as powering down a server or boosting the A/C a couple of degrees? Granted, stemming the tide of global warming and rising sea levels is obviously more complicated than swapping in energy-saving LED bulbs. But energy efficiency is indeed an important—and often underappreciated—tool to reduce pollution and waste. After all, energy efficiency is America’s largest energy resource, having done more to meet the nation’s energy needs than oil, gas, and nuclear power over the past four decades.

Infographic from Natural Resources Defense Council

Energy efficiency is the art of getting the same or better performance using less energy—all while cutting utility bills for residential, business, and industrial customers. It has done more to meet our growing energy needs than oil, gas, and nuclear combined over the past 40 years.

Boosting energy efficiency in buildings, vehicles, appliances, and equipment is an inexpensive, low-impact way to reduce climate pollution, including carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, on a grand scale. If we need widespread adaptation of energy efficiency to reduce emissions at the pace and scale required to reach net-zero (and we do), it’s time for every small business, every large corporation, every iteration of how professionals gather to make a plan to meaningfully cut their kWh consumption.

After decades of working for utilities to teach students and families how to be energy efficiency in their homes and communities, Power Down Fridays was a poignant way to bring that messaging home. Our little day-to-day habits really do combine to make a big difference.

The staying power of Power Down Friday: How doing less makes more of a difference