Jefferson Middle School, one of the schools we will be studying spring term.

Our Findings

We visited a total of 24 businesses around Eugene. Most of these were offices, with some grocery stores, medical clinics and one hotel. We provided each business with a benchmark score of their building's energy efficiency on a scale of 1 to 100. The scores ranged hugely, from 11 to 99. Five of the buildings were unable to be given a score as they did not meet all of the portfolio manager specifications. (see "Energy Audits" to learn about these specifications). Eleven of the buildings scored a 75 or higher.

It was a challenge to fit real world situations to a very generalized program. In some cases we could not take everything into account. However, we hope that all of these businesses found this information useful and will utilitize it in the future.

We have given every business information they can use to track their improvements. Improving the energy efficiency of businesses will begin to improve the energy efficiency of the city of Eugene as a whole. It is a step toward urban sustainability.

Spring Term

Spring term we will perform in depth energy studies on three public K-12 schools around Eugene. Schools are huge energy users, which gives us a chance to discover huge savings. Since we only have a limited time to make as big of a difference as possible, we would like to focus on the large energy users.

We chose to offer our service to public schools since schools have been facing constant budget cuts and financial hardships. Energy is becoming more and more expensive and schools are operating on budgets that are not increasing with costs. If we can help them save money on their energy bill we will have done a huge social service to the city.