Inter-School Collaboration for Conservation Quantification (Finalist)

The purpose of the Inter-School Conservation Quantification Collaboration effort is to empower Grade 8 students and teachers to understand the direct impact that their actions to reduce energy consumption will have. This would inspire further exploration in high school and post-secondary school.

Innovative Aspect

Unlike the current Toronto and Ontario Eco-Schools program, (http://www.ontarioecoschools.org) which groups schools using qualified measurements into bronze, silver, gold and platinum rankings, we plan to establish quantitative measurements and ways to properly normalize them, so we can compare schools and see the quantitative impacts that various energy conservation efforts have.

We want those measurable energy consumption reduction actions to be developed by the Grade 8 students themselves once they understand the overall reality of climate change, what the causes are, and have an understanding of the baseline consumption measurements of their own school, in the context of the community they live in.

Efforts to develop quantitative measurements will be done on a collaborative between participating schools in the 416. Instead of travelling between schools, we would use current social media and web technology to enable collaboration within a school and between schools and between experts both local and remote. We will then expand the collaborative effort to include schools in the 905 region. From there, we would take the effort international and partner with schools outside Canada.

We would also like to work with existing groups such as the Learning for a Sustainable Future and the Kortright Centre of the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority to identify best practices to establish energy consumption baselines and energy consumption reduction exercises which can quantified, and used between schools in the 416, 416 & 905 and 416 & schools in other countries.

How it will help Toronto

Success will help the current eco-schools effort evolve, and establish a collaborative approach to identifying measurable solutions for energy consumption reduction. This effort would have local, national and international implications as we bring the experience of crowdsourcing solutions to energy consumption reduction to a younger demographic

Steps to be taken

Understanding the Current Problem

We will leverage volunteers from the Climate Reality Project to help establish the overall context of what is driving the need to reduce energy consumption.

http://www.climatereality.ca/

Establishing the External Baseline

Country --> Province --> City --> School

The external base line is the measurement of actual consumption of energy resources, electricity, natural gas and water.  This will be done for each participating school.

We will be able to show the students the starting point at various levels, using CO2 equivalent emission numbers.

At the national and provincial level, we will use the national and provincial inventory numbers documented by Environment Canada in May 2011.

 http://unfccc.int/files/national_reports/annex_i_ghg_inventories/national_inventories_submissions/application/zip/can-2011-nir-16may.zip

 At the GTA Level we will use The Living City Report Card 2011 – An assessment of the environmental health of the Greater Toronto Area, published in March 2011 by Greening Greater Toronto, an initiative of CivicAction.

  http://www.thelivingcity.org/lcrc4/

 Quantifiable Consumption Reduction Exercises

 We will look at the current thoughts of the Inconvenient Youth to identify potential projects which would resonate with Grade 8 level students

http://www.inconvenientyouth.org/

 We intend to work with the Learning for a Sustainable Future team to leverage quantifiable energy consumption reduction exercises which they have already documented from around the world. We hope to establish a set of actions which can be done within schools, between schools in the same city / region, and between schools in different countries (Pams of LSF has indicated a willingness to connect to this effort - October 3 comment)

 http://www.lsf-lst.ca/

 We intend to work with the Kortright Center of the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority, to identify specific experiences they have in quantifying energy consumption reduction exercises, and to leverage other experiences from other resources in their international network (Darryl Gray of Kortright has indicated a willingness to connect to this effort - October 4 comment)

 http://www.kortright.org/