By: Eyon Brown, contributing writer
To commemorate Earth Day 2018 and raise awareness of everyday energy consumption, Rob Richards, Wofford’s Energy Sustainability Manager, introduced the 2018 Residence Hall Sustainability Challenge. The challenge is tracked through the use of the BuildingOS platform, which originally was used at Oberlin College as a student project.
“At Oberlin, they wanted something to foster student engagement and things of that nature,” says Richards. “Generally most folks have done something similar around Earth Day to try to tie that annual event into an energy challenge like this.”
The purpose of the challenge was to track the energy consumption of each individual residence area on campus from Marsh, Greene, and Carlisle to the Michael S. Brown Village Center. Richards says that the true goal of the challenge is to show both how much energy is used on a daily basis and how much energy could be saved if more attention were given to it.
“I would like for people to realize that even small changes such as remembering to turn your lights out when you leave your room – if 100 people do it at the same time, it could make a meaningful impact,” says Richards.
Though Earth Day itself is an annual occurrence, Mr. Richards expressed interest in increasing the frequency of the Sustainability Challenge, adding that he would be interested in tracking energy consumption “potentially multiple times a year.”
As an entire campus, though, the future is bright for energy consumption at Wofford. One of Richards’ goals on a larger scale is to continue taking on energy-saving projects like “replacing light fixtures and replacing inefficient mechanical and electrical equipment.” However, according to Richards, this is no overnight process. “Those projects require capital expenditures to do and there’s a competition there for limited resources, so it’s a long process,” he says.
No matter how long it takes, the future is bright for sustainability at Wofford. Or, if we remember to turn the lights off, maybe it’s dimmer.