Blog

 

At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, students are on the verge of securing funding for countless energy efficiency and clean energy projects for years to come. Students at the University of Utah are busy bringing an additional 25kW solar array to campus and the Mississippi State Focus team is preparing to launch an energy audit program on campus. In the far Northeastern part of the country, community members, staff, and students at Northern Maine Community College are exploring and expanding the potential for biomass energy. Things are looking well across the Focus the Nation landscape.

 

The state of clean energy leadership is clearly seen in Madison, Wisconsin. Just six months ago I was having my first meeting with the Focus Coordinators (FCs) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now their team, Focus Wisconsin, is on the verge of proposing an innovative project that will push their community to become more energy efficient and serve as a model for future programs at other colleges and communities in their state and around the nation. 

 

It hasn't just been the leadership among the Focus Wisconsin team that has propelled the project forward though. Focus Coordinators Joel Charles, a Master of Public Health student who has his feet planted in the Politico and Storyteller quadrant and Kristine Engel, an Innovator and Technician on the way to receiving a Mechanical Engineering degree, have prioritized collaboration between their campus and community at every stage of the F2A program.

 

Now other leaders on campus and off-campus have joined them to see how to best to address their primary roadblocks and solutions that were discussed at their clean energy forum, The Negawatt Summit: Catalyzing Energy Conservation In Our Community. 

 

Along with leadership from the University of Wisconsin’s We Conserve program, local utility Madison Gas & Electric, and input from groups like the Madison Green Property Owners Apartment Association, Focus on Energy, and WISPIRG Energy Service Corps, clean energy collaboration and leadership in Madison are resulting in a program to incentivize energy efficiency programs in off-campus apartment complexes. The pieces are starting to be put together on how to bring together multi-family housing unit property owners who are willing to make certain green/energy efficient commitments with students who are looking for greener properties and willing to make certain commitments about behavior change. 

 

Though there is a lot more planning, discussions, and program development to occur before a the project officially gets launched, so much has already happened since the F2A program was launched in Wisconsin last fall. As a Focus Coach watching all this happen from our Oregon headquarters, it’s rewarding and exciting to know that projects and collaborations like these are happening, not just in Wisconsin, but all across the country. It’s exciting to know that we’re only a half a year into this year’s F2A program cycle and our Focus teams will continue to develop and implement solution-oriented programs in the country. Even more exciting is the fact that in less than six months, we’ll have an entire new cohort of teams starting the program pushing clean energy solutions in their local communities. I know I’ll be watching carefully to see how Focus Wisconsin’s  and other projects develops. I hope you will be too!