Change a Light Campaign
Project Name: Change a Light Campaign
Project Manager: Elizabeth Stickel – elizabethanne.s@gmail.com or eastickel@uas.alaska.edu
Project Description
This project encourages individuals and businesses alike to change from using traditional incandescent bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs through general energy education, advertising, and trial.
Needs Analysis
Describe the need that was addressed by your project.
This project works to reduce Alaskan's energy usage that relates to a reduction in both financial and environmental costs. Alaska has a high cost of living making a project focusing on reducing energy costs very pertinent. Also, the portions of Alaska that do not use natural power sources, such as the hydropower used in Juneau, are contributing to global warming. As a result, the glaciers of Alaska are melting at alarming rates.
Describe who your target audience was.
The target for this project is every individual or business that uses light (everyone!) Currently, the campaign has been focused mostly on reducing individual energy consumption but has plans to expand into reducing corporate energy consumption to impact a greater portion of Alaska.
Describe why you chose to focus on this need.
UAS SIFE chose to work on the Change a Light Campaign because of the necessity to save the pristine environment that we live in as well as retain people to live here. One of the main reasons that people do not live in Alaska is because of the high cost of living. The Change a Light Campaign's goal is to reduce energy costs that will thereby reduce the cost of living for Alaskans, thus improving the area where we live. Also, with the movement toward green activities lately, this project will help participants to succeed in our evolving, competitive global economy.Project Analysis
Describe the project your team created and implemented to address the above need.
The Change a Light Campaign works to educate consumers about the benefits of switching from energy-absorbing traditional incandescent light bulbs to more energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (also commonly known as CFLs). Educational brochures, posters, and bookmarks were produced and distributed throughout the towns of Southeast Alaska. UAS SIFE has planned promotional events where CFL bulbs, literature, as well as canvas totes will be handed out to citizens in communities throughout Alaska. At these promotions, watt meters will also be used to show individuals and businesses the savings they will receive by switching to the more energy-efficient CFL bulbs. An Internet campaign was also produced as this is one of the few ways to connect the many cities of Southeast Alaska that are not otherwise connected. This website acts as the central portal for our campaign. The website can be accessed at www.alaskasife.org/changealight/index. At this website, both individuals and businesses have the opportunity to receive more educational material about energy and CFL bulbs (both general and directly pertaining to Alaska) as well as making a pledge to change a desired number of incandescent bulbs to CFL bulbs. To help in determining what portions of our advertising campaign need to be improved, the pledge page has a question requiring the pledger to fill in their zip code. If a majority of the pledges are received from a certain zip code, we know that we need to place more emphasis in targeting the areas where few zip code results were received.Describe why this project best fit the needs of the target audience.
As stated previously, Alaska is in need of projects that will help keep its environment pristine and attract people to live here and businesses to work here. The Change a Light Campaign performs these tasks by educating the individuals and businesses and then providing them with the opportunity to make a difference in their community as well as benefit financially.Success Analysis
Describe the way in which your team measured the success of the project.
The Change a Light Campaign pledge tracker system was used to measure project success. The pledge tracker system tracked the number of pledges that each person made, in addition to their zip code to find out where the pledges were being made from. Progress on the campaign is reported in number of pledges, number of dollars saved in energy costs, as well as number of greenhouse gas emissions reduced (if applicable to an area that is not running off clean energy sources).
Describe why your team chose the measurement tool(s) used for the project.
This project measurement tool was chosen because it was the easiest to implement. An online tracking database is more feasible than requiring a Change a Light Campaign representative at each store to track the sales of CFL bulbs. We realize that there is a margin of error for people pledging and then not following through with their pledges. To reduce this error, we have also collected email addresses from everyone that pledges to change their bulbs to CFL bulbs and plan to send out reminder emails to ensure their bulbs were changed.
Outline the results of the project based on the measurement tool(s) used.
So far, 343 bulb pledges have been made, resulting in $10,290 in energy savings over the life of the bulbs. This also results in 154,350 pounds reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (though slightly less as Juneau is partially reliant on hydropower that does not release greenhouse gas emissions).SIFE Criteria Met
Success Skills – The Change a Light Campaign teaches individuals and businesses the skills they need to succeed in our evolving world where the focus is more and more on environmentally-friendly operations. These success skills relate to understanding that there is a need for environmental products, the benefits of using environmental products, as well as an understanding that not always are environmentally products more expensive.