News
Campus Resource Monitoring System wins NWF Chill Out award
April 16, 2007
Washington, DC - On March 30, The National Wildlife Federation named Oberlin College a winner in the Campus Ecology Chill Out contest for its Campus Resource Monitoring System. Oberlin was one of eight winning schools chosen for the award from over 100 competition entries received from colleges nationwide. For these impressive efforts, the National Wildlife Federation will be featuring Oberlin in their Chill Out webcast on April 18, broadcast live from George Washington University in Washington, DC, which will include a recorded address from Al Gore. The College will also receive a grant from the National Wildlife Federation to continue innovating global warming solutions.
Catch the webcast on April 18 at NWF online »
From the National Wildlife Federation:
This prestigious award was given because of the "Campus Resource Monitoring System," or CRMS, Oberlin students developed. The CRMS is an automated monitoring system and web site that gathers, processes, and displays data on energy and water use in dormitories.
"The data on environmental performance of buildings can be used to engage, educate, motivate, and empower students to conserve resources," says Environmental Studies professor John Petersen. "And Oberlin students have been critical to every aspect of designing this system." As the subjects, audience and designers of the CRMS, Oberlin students occupy a unique role. Michael Murray '04, the president and co-founder of Lucid Design Group, is one of the initial student architects of the CRMS, along with Vladislav (Vladi) Shunturov '05, and Gavin Platt '06. Lucid Design Group is a small business that provides hardware to measure a building’s environmental impact and software to store and visualize it.
"Colleges and universities are key places for demonstrating how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the major culprit of global warming," says Julian Keniry, Director of Campus and Community Leadership for the National Wildlife Federation. "Oberlin has demonstrated its leadership in promoting renewable energy options both on campus and throughout the surrounding community."
For an exciting two week period in 2005, dormitories competed to see who could reduce their resource use by the largest percentage; the entire campus got involved with over 80 percent of the Oberlin student body participating. The results were impressive: On average, dorms reduced electricity use by 32 percent during the competition. The two dorms with real-time feedback won with 56 percent reductions in electricity. During the two week competition students conserved 68,000 kilowatt hours, $5,100 and reduced emissions by 150,000 pounds of CO2, 1,400 lbs of SO2 and 500 lbs of NOx. A conservative estimate is that CRMS will save Oberlin $66,000 annually in electricity costs.
The CRMS website received 4,000 hits during the competition. The majority of hits came from computers located in dorm rooms.
The project was so successful that in the spring of 2005 the student team won $75,000 in EPA’s "People Prosperity and the Planet" design competition to expand the project to the majority of dormitories. Eighteen dormitories and 10 student houses are now included, providing over 80% of Oberlin students with feedback.
Winning schools in the contest are: California State University, Chico; Mount Wachusett Community College, Gardner, Massachusetts; Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey; Richard Stockton College, Somers Point, New Jersey; Oregon Institute of Technology, Klamath Falls, Oregon; University of California at Santa Barbara; Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio; the Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
The National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Program has been an integral part of the campus greening movement since 1989. The nation’s 4,100 colleges and universities educate more than 15 million students in any given year making these schools important laboratories for creativity and innovation — keys to tackling a monumental crisis like global warming.
The competition recognizes colleges and universities around the country which are implementing innovative programs to reduce the impacts of global warming — the #1 environmental threat facing the nation. Lucid team member John Petersen will be in DC accepting the award, along with representatives from the seven other winning colleges and universities. The NWF considered over 100 applicants altogether, and this is one of a long line of awards and recognitions that the CRMS has received.
Visit the Campus Resource Monitoring System website »
Visit the NWF's Campus Ecology website »
About Lucid Design Group
Lucid Design Group, Inc. is a privately held cleantech software company, founded in 2004, and a pioneer in providing real-time information feedback to teach, inspire behavior change and save energy and water resources in buildings. Over the past six years, Lucid's team has endeavored to make resource use visible, accessible and engaging so that building occupants have the data visualization and communication tools to manage and reduce their consumption.
Today, tens of thousands of people live and work in schools, companies, community and commercial buildings and homes enhanced by Lucid's web-based Building Dashboard® technology. Now in its fourth generation, the intuitive Building Dashboard® user interface allows occupants to connect personal electricity, water and natural gas consumption with the actions and events that take place within buildings.
