Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek has signed the Power Down Pledge, have you? By inking his thumbprint on the pledge poster, the chancellor pledged to reduce his on-campus energy use. The Power Down Pledge is an initiative of Make Orange Green and the Chancellor’s Energy Challenge, an aggressive energy-reduction program aimed at reducing UT’s energy consumption
Faculty and staff can and should take advantage of the new water bottle refill stations that have been installed all over campus. New BPA-free “Switch Your Thinking” bottles will be available for faculty and staff at UT’s Fall Festival on Friday.
UT Knoxville is celebrating Make Orange Green with a kickoff event at Presidential Court on Thursday, September 22 from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. The event will offer students, faculty, and staff a look at what the campus and local organizations are doing to save energy, reduce waste, and promote environmental leadership.
UT Knoxville is home to the nation’s first automated electric bicycle (e-bike) sharing system. The pilot program is the subject of a research study by civil and engineering assistant professor Chris Cherry and Stacy Worley and David Smith from biosystems engineering. If successful, it may be adopted into a full-scale program by the university.
Summer’s in full swing, and so is the Switch Your Thinking Chancellor’s Challenge. In the month of May the UT Knoxville campus made its largest gain in its effort to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent. Faculty, staff, and students worked together to achieve a 3.7 percent reduction in electricity use for the month of
Temperatures are rising as summer draws near, but our progress in the Switch Your Thinking Chancellor’s Challenge has taken a dip. While we are still making progress, it is not enough to meet the chancellor’s goal of reducing our campus’s energy consumption by 10 percent over twelve months.
With temperatures soaring into the nineties, it is no secret we are using more energy—and we use the most energy between 2:00 and 8:00 p.m. It is also during these hours that our campus is charged more for its energy usage—by almost 50 percent more than other months.
After just two months into the Switch Your Thinking Chancellor’s Challenge, UT Knoxville faculty, staff, and students have helped to reduce the campus’s overall energy consumption by an average of 1.5 percent. In March, the campus’s consumption was down by 2.2 percent, a decrease of more than 400,000 kilowatt hours of electricity.
Last week Tennessee Today premiered a music video for Switch Your Thinking, our campus’s campaign to reduce energy consumption by 10 percent this year. The “Re-energize Switch Your Thinking” video featured everyone’s favorite mascot, Smokey, alongside students and staff from the Knoxville campus. The video was a collaboration of efforts from the Office of Communications
To celebrate Earth Month and UT’s re-energized Switch Your Thinking energy saving effort, several Volunteers worked together to produce a new music video. While Smokey is always the star of every show, we hope you enjoy the performances of our students and staff and heed the message of the song, which was written especially for
Today marks the beginning of Earth Month as well as a change in the way our campus purchases electricity. Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek outlines TVA’s new rate structure, which aims to reduce overall consumption during high energy use times, and what the campus community can do to help.
The first month’s results are in –- and the news is good. Faculty, staff and students have helped to reduce our campus’s overall energy consumption by 0.8 percent.