Thursday’s Focus is Energy in the Fort Collins No Impact Project!

Continue your efforts to avoid unnecessary purchases, minimize trash, using green transportation, and eating sustainably, while adding in energy conservation. If you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late to jump in!

If you haven’t registered, you can go to http://noimpactproject.org/experiment/ and click on the City of Fort Collins link on the left. You will not be able to open the link to the guide that they email you from work, so I’ve attached the section for Tuesday (transportation). You should be able to access the guide from a home computer, or you can forward this message to your personal email if you want access to it from home. Please don’t print it unless you really need to. 

Energy Conservation Tips:

• Turn off the lights when you aren’t in the room. This is simple, but it makes a difference!
• Wash clothes on cold and use a detergent that works well on cold.
• Dry clothes on a line or drying rack instead of using the dryer.
• Prevent energy loss in your house. Check for leaks around windows, doors and from your fire place if you have one. Make sure your house is well insulated. Having a home energy audit is a great way to find problem areas.
• Purchase energy efficient appliances when older models die.
• Plug multiple appliances into a single power strip and turn it off when they are not in use.
• Home Energy Tip: Try a programmable thermostat
  Heating and cooling accounts for almost half your energy bill – about $1,000 a year! A programmable thermostat is one of the easiest ways you can save energy in your home and help reduce carbon pollution. An Energy Star qualified programmable thermostat helps make it easy for you to save by offering four pre-programmed settings to regulate your home’s temperature in both summer and winter – when you are asleep or away.
  Learn more about saving energy at home: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_save_energy_at_home
• Check Out Energy Star’s Save Energy at Home tool to save money and reduce carbon pollution
  Energy Star’s Save Energy at Home Tool can guide you in making your home more energy efficient — whether you do it yourself or hire a qualified professional. The online tool has tips for saving energy all around your home and targets each room individually. Remember, when you save energy, you’re saving money and cutting carbon pollution.
  Try the tool: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=popuptool.atHome

Below are links to additional information on Energy Conservation and Green Energy.

• The City of Fort Collins Utilities has great information on efficiency and rebates! http://www.fcgov.com/utilities/residential/conserve There is a lot of information about the rebates and discounted price of energy efficient lighting on the website and on the Energy poster (attached)
• Request that your home electricity come from Windsource (Excel Energy Customers): http://www.xcelenergy.com/Save_Money_&_Energy/Residential/Renewable_Energy_Programs/Windsource_for_Residences_-_CO
• Have a home efficiency audit subsidized by the City of Fort Collins: http://www.fcgov.com/utilities/residential/conserve/energy-efficiency/home-efficiency-program/audits (there are generally coupons for $10 off the audit in the Valpak coupon mailers or online). Once you have had an audit, you can receive rebates from the City on certain energy efficiency improvements if you use one of their participating contractors.
• EPA: How can I reduce my impact: http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/reduce.html
• Find out where your power comes from with EPAs Power Profiler: http://oaspub.epa.gov/powpro/ept_pack.charts

The City of Fort Collins is hosting No Impact Week for Earth Week 2014!

The NRRC Green Teams challenge YOU to participate.

No Impact Week is described as a “Carbon Cleanse.” Each day of the week you add a new focus while continuing to the do the previous sustainable activities. The challenge will run from April 20 to April 26. To register, go to: http://noimpactproject.org/experiment/. The “City of Fort Collins, CO No Impact Week” can be selected from the bar on the left of the web page. Once you register, you will receive links to a pre-survey and a guide. The survey link works, but unfortunately the website hosting the pdf Guide is blocked by USDA. Instead, your green team will be emailing it to you.

This Challenge is based on the movie No Impact Man that ARS Fort Collins viewed on Earth Day two years ago. ARS Fort Collins’ EMS (green) Team will re-show the movie at each ARS building at noon over the next 2 weeks. Bring your lunch! Feel free to attend whichever building’s showing you want.

• Today (4/10) – Bldg. D, Eagle conf room
• Next Wed (4/16) – Bldg B – check with Bldg B green team for time and place!
• Next Thurs (4/17) – NCGRP main conf room
• Next Fri (4/18) – CRL conf room

Some employees will have limitations to participation during the week, depending on their personal and work situations. For example, if you live in Greeley it may not be feasible to use human-powered transportation to get to work, but you might be able to take public transportation or carpool. Or perhaps you can do all of your errands on the way home instead of making a separate trip, thus cutting back on your driving. The point is, challenge yourself and do the best you can.

USDA ARS Fort Collins’ goal is to have at least 50 of our employees participate in this challenge (~25%).

Here’s the plan for No Impact Week (Note that themes are celebrated in a different order at Bldg B):

• On Sunday (April 20), stop buying things you don’t need.
• On Monday (April 21), decrease your trash generation, and don’t buy things you don’t need.
• On Tuesday (April 22), use sustainable transportation while practicing decreased consumption and trash generation.
• On Wednesday (April 23), start eating sustainably while continuing to use sustainable transportation and decreasing your trash and consumption.
• On Thursday (April 24), cut your energy use while continuing to eat sustainably, use sustainable transportation, and decreasing your trash and consumption.
• On Friday (April 25), cut your water use while continuing to minimize your energy use, eat sustainably, use sustainable
• On Saturday (April 26), give back to the community while continuing your sustainable activities from the week.

Details and suggestions are in the guide.  Watch for daily posters in your building focusing on that day’s theme.

Additional activities going on during the week will be announced in upcoming emails and posts!

Building A reduces energy, saves dollars

Building A has had a 33% decline in gas usage and a 15% decline in electricity usage since 2008 for a savings of $116,000! I pulled off the data for the last 5 years of energy consumption for Building A on the NRRC campus and put it in an excel spreadsheet. The charts below summarize the usage. We think the revolving door is responsible for some of the decline but not all. We have reduced servers and there are government initiatives on energy conservation. For example all our printers were replaced last year with energy-efficient printers, and we installed light switches with motion detectors for our business rooms. I calculated an average total savings from 2008 to 2012 at $116,000.  Way to go Building A! 

 

 

Shut down, log off, hibernate, stand-by – which is it?

You always hear that you should shut down your computer each evening. In fact there is a little counter recently installed on your computer that requires you to shut it down every 7 days so updates can occur. But shutting down my computer is anathema to me. Turning it on each morning sometimes takes half an hour. I don’t know if it needs a morning cup of coffee or what, but it seems to take forever to get everything started up and logged on to the network.  It is really tempting just to leave it on every night so it is ready in the morning. But that wastes energy. Is there a compromise? What about those stand-by and hibernate options?

Yes, those are both valid options – they both take less power than keeping it on at night and you can be up and running in a couple of minutes. The basic differences are:

Standby = low power, fast to resume

Hibernate = no power, longer to resume (also safer for protecting data).

These two options are nicely summarized in http://lifehacker.com/311701/hibernate-vs-standby and also by the Forest Service on the sustainable operations website: http://www.fs.fed.us/sustainableoperations/documents/hibernate-computer.pdf. Also you now comply with two executive orders – one that President Bush signed (EO 13423) and expanded on by President Obama (EO 13514). Both of these executive orders encourage energy efficiency and conservation in federal agencies.

So to minimize power and maximize work time, I use hibernate mode most of the time and I also turn my monitor off every night. On Tuesday I only log off and not shut down or hibernate in order to allow virus scans to occur; then I do a total shut down later that week.

Hibernate lets me minimize energy consumption but I also can be up and running quickly in the morning.

Friday is Power IT Down Day

This Friday, August 26th is National Power IT Down Day.

Because Power IT Down Day falls on a Friday, we can save more energy and money than ever with this one simple act.

In coordination with the Forest Service Sustainable Operations Office, the CIO will not push software updates over that weekend.

How Can I Participate?

• Power down electrical equipment, including computers, printers, scanners, faxes, clocks, radios, etc.
• If you must leave your computer on, the hibernate option saves energy.
• Spread the word! Remind your co-workers.
• Remember to turn on shared equipment, such as network printers, on Monday, August 29.

Why Is This Important?

• This event helps to meet our goal of cutting our greenhouse gas emissions from building energy consumption and purchased electricity and it reduces our environmental footprint.
• Last year’s Power IT Down Day sponsors donated $60,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project.

More Information

For more information visit http://poweritdown.org

Read the U.S. Forest Service’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which discusses efforts by the Agency to reduce consumption of energy, resources and water.

Read Executive Order 13514, which directs Federal agencies to establish Greenhouse Gas Emissions reduction goals.

New Green Team Logo

We have a new Green Team logo! Our thanks to Sheryl from the Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team for volunteering her time to create it for us! The logo includes icons representing our four main goals: energy and water conservation, waste reduction and alternative transportation. These goals match those of the City of Fort Collin’s Climate Wise program, of which we are a Silver-level partner. There’s a cool graphic of Horsetooth Rock in the center and it also looks great in black and white.