Town of Cary – Ethan Case – 2013

Goals

Ethan Case worked with the Town of Cary in North Carolina to develop the Chief’s Energy Challenge, a nationwide fire station energy reduction challenge. The Chief’s Energy Challenge was issued by the Fire Departments of Cary, Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill to fire stations across the nation. Departments and stations enrolling in the challenge commit to reducing energy use by 10% within 1 year and 20% within 3 years.

Solutions

Relying on the work of three previous EDF Climate Corps fellows and with the help of Cary’s Sustainability Manager, Case worked to help fire stations track their energy data for the first time, develop communications with zero-and-low cost energy savings options and provided guidance on how to implement a station-to-station energy reduction contest among fire stations..

Potential Impact

Case found that if only 500 of the country’s 31,000 fire stations sign up for the challenge, the annual savings estimated across departments could total approximately 1.2 million dollars, 11.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity, 300,000 therms of natural gas and 7,500 metric tons of carbon emissions.