About This Project

EnergyNet is partnering with Chicago Public Schools to minimize its impact on the environment and teach students to be environmental stewards.

EnergyNet effectively links the participating schools (teachers, students and facilities staff), the utilities and energy-service companies to meet the program's overarching goals of improving energy efficiency. This project will result in verifiable electric savings by focusing on three goals:

Electricity Reduction: 

Goal 1-- EnergyNet will make the results of the students' work clear
and verifiable by linking participating schools with building energy data from the
utilities and the associated energy-service companies.

The energy use data are normalized for weather, electric rates, non-functioning equipment, and building size resulting in an "apples to apples" comparison among all participating schools over
time. This data and the associated student activities is available to DCEO online
through our interactive web interface tools.

Our goal will be for schools to achieve a verifiable reduction in energy use as a result
of both building occupant behavior modifications and potential equipment upgrades
identified through the program period. This will help spread the energy use
awareness and practices more broadly in the communities where the participating
schools are located. EnergyNet will work with the student teams to share information
on incentives available through the Illinois Energy Efficiency Portfolio and
opportunities available through Performance Contracting. Students will present
information on these incentives and opportunities to their school decision makers
helping better enable equipment upgrades that will improve overall building energy
efficiency.

Goal 2 -- Increased Learning: Classroom materials will be correlated to the Illinois Learning
Standards for Math, Science and Language Arts as well as the Illinois goals for
Technology Literacy, Applied Learning Standards and Workplace Skills. Materials will
include lesson plans, student handouts, and authentic assessment strategies and
tools such as rubrics, portfolios, pre-/post-quizzes, etc. Teaching materials will
incorporate data collection and reporting strategies for both the purpose of teaching
scientific method, technical writing and data documentation as well as providing
DCEO evaluation data on the efficacy of the effort as it relates to the program goals.

Goal 3 -- Environmental/Renewable Energy Opportunities: Students will be encouraged
to learn about and share information on various renewable energy and environmental
strategies that are most appropriate for their particular circumstances.