Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch other campuses’ videos and see what they did to energize students.

Overall Campus Conservation Nationals saved 1,739,046 kWh of electricity and $157,925, equivalent to taking 151 US homes off the grid for year!  Not to mention the 1,554,814 gallons of water, equaling 10,365 shower hours!

Keep up to date with CCN and learn more about getting involved in next year’s competition.

 Colleges and universities from across the country are gearing up to compete against each other to see who can reduce the most energy and conserve the most water.  There are over 150 campuses and 1700 buildings that will be participating.

Last year’s pilot competition campuses saved $50,200, 508,000 kilowatt-hours and 816,000 pounds of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.  And that was only 40 schools.  With almost four times the number of participating campuses, this year’s savings are bound to add up fast.  The goal for all schools combined is to reduce energy by an entire giga-watt!

 Last year students created videos highlighting how they were saving energy and what innovative strategies they were using to get the word out. Check them out and get ready for some more great videos and ideas this year.

If your campus is participating, sign up to be a dorm captain! You can take the lead in your dorm and encourage your fellow students to reduce their energy and water. Tell us some of your strategies—how are you getting the word out, do you have any cool events planned?  If your school missed the deadline to sign up, don’t worry!  Check back to see how this year’s competition is going and start thinking about signing up for next year.

See more videos from last year’s competition!

National Wildlife Federation is partnering with Lucid, U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Alliance to Save Energy to host Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN). Between February 6 and April 23, 2012, participating colleges and universites will compete in a 3-week (your choice of weeks) competition to achieve the greatest possible energy and water reductions in residence halls.

Participating schools will choose to compete against buildings on their own campus, in a state/regional competition or against a select group of peer institutions with savings from all participants accumulating as we strive to achieve a national goal of 1 gigawatt-hour!

We want you to join the competition and encourage each other to reduce electiricty and water usage! Still not sure you’re ready? Join us at 2pm eastern on Thursday November 10 for a free webinar to hear from the organizers. They will talk about the competition and answer any questions that may be holding you back from signing up right now.

Register for the free webinar today!  Or jump in and sign up for CCN!

We’re announcing the results in a free webcast – Chill Out: Climate Action on Campus that you can screen on your campus or on your laptop. Tune in to hear from leaders that have stepped up to lower their carbon footprints.

This year’s webcast features six amazing projects from all over the country.  Not only will you get to see what they are doing on campus, but you will hear directly from the students and staff that are leading these projects.

Register to see who were this year’s competition winners, and what real ingenuity and leadership on campus looks like. We recommend you use Chill Out as a mobilizing tool, on its own or as part of your other Earth Day activities. We’ll even send you an organizing kit via email to help you plan. The webcast will be available at 9am on April 13, so you can download and view at your own convenience. The program lasts 30 minutes and is designed for students, faculty, staff and administrators.

Register today!

The Department of Labor has announced the Green Jobs Innovation Fund competition to support opportunities in green industry sectors and occupations.  President Obama has called on the United States to have “the best educated, most competitive workforce in the world,” and one way to get there is through green jobs.

With community colleges involved in the training of half of the students that attend college, they provide the backbone of education for the nation’s workforce.  Green jobs programs are already in place at many community colleges and students are already seeing the value in them.  Many community colleges are struggling to continue these incredible programs without additional funding, so this announcement presents a great opportunity.

The Green Jobs Innovation Fund will award approximately $40 million to support five to eight grantees with awards ranging from $5 million to $8 million each.  Applicants include national and state organizations that work with local communities that currently offer career training programs and must benefit a minimum of six communities per grant.

The funds will enable organizations to develop training programs that incorporate green career pathways by forging linkages between apprenticeship programs and integrating technical and basic skills training through community-based partnerships.  The grants are tied to the Labor Department’s vision of increasing the number of individuals completing training programs with industry-recognized credentials and increasing the number of individuals completing training programs for employment in green jobs.

The deadline for these applications is March 29, 2011.  There is an informational webinar on February 25 at noon eastern regarding thee Green Jobs Innovation Fund.  Please tune into the webinar for more info, or view it at a later date as it will be available online.

View the full announcement and get more details on the Green Jobs Innovation Fund.

Campus Conservation Nationals is the first national electricity and water reduction competition on college and university campuses. With 40 institutions, 500 buildings and 120,000 students around North America participating, it’s also proving to be extremely popular. Each school is striving to be the top reducer during the three week competition, which ends November 19. The goal is to engage, educate, motivate and empower students across the country to modify their behavior to become better stewards of the resources used in residence halls, while positively contributing the carbon reduction efforts of their campuses.

All this energy reduction doesn’t mean that students are going to be sitting around alone in the dark in their dorm rooms, however; many campuses have been devising extremely creative ways to reduce their resource use that actually build positive experiences for students rather than depriving them of anything. The Phantom Hunter is on the lookout for energy wasters at Humboldt State University.  Organizers at Brown University held a Glee watching party to encourage people to leave their rooms dark and gather to watch on just one TV.  Radford University’s mascot, The Highlander is scouting Radford’s campus to ensure students are using resources wisely. He is getting everyone involved, including Radford’s president!

Check out www.competetoreduce.org to see if your campus or alma mater is participating and find out what college is in the lead.  Don’t feel left out if your campus didn’t participate this year–find out the details and how to sign up for the 2011 competition today.

With all of this back-to-school excitement, it’s easy to forget about the impacts our purchases have on climate change.  Is there a way to know what companies are working to mitigate their effects on climate change?  Do companies listen when you tell them climate change is an important factor in you purchasing their products?  The answer to both is YES!

Your one-stop-shop for climate info on companies is Climate Counts.  They rate companies in many different sectors on their climate action, greenhouse gas reductions, stance on legislation and public reporting.  Companies are listening and are driven by the consumer.  This year, many of the companies rated by Climate Counts scored better than the previous year.  Climate Counts gives you all the resources you need to contact companies and tell them how you feel about their actions (or lack thereof) on climate change.

So before you head out for back-to-school shopping check out Climate Counts’ scorecards and get Back-to-Cool with your purchases.

This past weekend at the Virginia Powershift Conference, more than 100 students gathered to take part in the International Day of Climate Action. We joined people from over 180 countries and 5200 events worldwide to show our support for climate leadership and the need to take action to fight climate change.  Letters were written to Senators Webb and Warner to encourage them to vote for strong federal climate legislation this fall in the Senate.

Check out all of the 350 International Day of Climate Action photos.