Home Energy Challenge Season Three Ends with a Virtual Bang!
HEC Season Three virtual celebration on June 25th, 2020
Last week we gathered over Zoom to celebrate our Season Three success with an Earth-themed cocktail, family feud, inspirational success stories, and recognition of the winners and prizes!
This round we had over 100 households joining, including 13 teams across the City and County and everywhere in between – with names like CliMATES, Global Chillin, Heroes Approaching Zero, and my favorite: Make America Greta Again.
To give you a quick background of the Challenge, the season starts with volunteers hosting a “Power Party” with 5-10 friends, co-workers, or neighbors who own or rent their home. At the party, participants calculate their household’s carbon footprint within our cvillechallenge.org platform and then begin to select actions based on their goals and resources. Households have nine months to take action, gaining resources and support from Andrea Bostrom, our C3 Residential Program Manager and their team members.
David from Team Chilin’ doing DIY Energy Efficiency work!
Individual Household Winners
This season we had 21 households reach their goal of losing 5,000 lbs of CO2e--the most ever which is super exciting!
Our team that completed the most actions was a team from Team Heroes Approaching Zero aptly named “The Hive” household. They took 18 actions!
From team CliMates, the Hellman household reduced the most carbon emissions by offsetting their work travel with the purchase of renewable energy credits. This resulted in a reduction of approximately 96,000 lbs CO2.
Team Winner
And our top team this season with SEVEN families losing 5,000 lbs was (drumroll please) Team Global Chillin’! Collectively, they performed the most actions (83!), reduced the most carbon (over 100,000 lbs), and saved the most water (28,000 gallons). Way to make a climate difference.
In This Game of Homes, Everyone Wins
The real winner, though, is our community. Collectively, HEC households took 360 actions from adjusting thermostats to purchasing EVs. They saved over $20,000 on energy and water costs and reduced CO2e emissions by 172 tons. That’s like eliminating 29 homes’ energy use for an entire year.
Way to go, TEAM Charlottesville #FTW.
We’ll be featuring individual families’ stories in upcoming blogs, but to find out more contact andrea@theclimatecollaborative.org or if you’re ready to host a Power Party this Fall to begin reaping the savings and feel good about cutting your carbon emissions, go to our website page. We believe every action makes a difference and together we can tackle climate change.
To read the press release, click here.