Make it a competition

A great way to harness your occupants’ competitive spirit is to host a competition. You can join an existing competition, such as a local Kilowatt Crackdown, or start your own. See EPA’s list of legislation and campaigns leveraging ENERGY STAR for competitions near you.

Plan a competition with the ENERGY STAR Energy Efficiency Competition Guide

You can also host your own internal competition. For example, Sears Holdings Corporation launched its own Kmart Kilowatt Challenge for its employees. And Staples annually hosts the Global ECO-Easy Challenge, in which engineering teams compete to invent energy-efficient and environmentally responsible products.

Competitions are a great way to:

  • Build camaraderie in a shared effort
  • Harness people’s competitive spirit
  • Focus efforts in a very defined way
  • Keep it fun
  • Provide awards or recognition for winners
  • Gain significant cost savings

Use the ENERGY STAR Energy Efficiency Competition Guide to help plan and launch an energy efficiency competition for your organization. It also includes case studies, best practices, tips for success, and a sample 12-month competition timeline.

Join the ENERGY STAR National Building CompetitionENERGY STAR National Building Competition logo.

Each year, EPA hosts the ENERGY STAR National Building Competition, which pits commercial buildings and tenants from across the nation against each other in a contest to see who can trim their energy waste the most. The winner is the building or tenant that reduces its energy use the most over the 12-month competition period. Every year the rules change a little, but a few things stay the same…winners achieve impressive double-digit reductions and everyone has fun!

Visit our section on motivating with a competition to find best practices and lessons learned from other competitions, such as the Louisville’s Kilowatt Crackdown, Chicago’s Green Office Challenge, and Cushman & Wakefield’s Environmental Challenge.