April, in addition to being Earth Month, is national Financial Literacy Month. KEEP is excited to take this opportunity to highlight our newest lesson collection. The Personal Finance collection features new and updated materials in Google format for educators to use in their classrooms to promote financial literacy.

But what does personal finance have to do with energy education?

The simple answer is that using less energy saves money, making it an area where managing a household budget has real-world energy impacts. Focus on Energy provides a great explanation of how focusing on the consumer-side of the energy equation can yield big social and economic dividends. “By eliminating energy waste we reduce the need to purchase coal and natural gas from other states. This keeps dollars in Wisconsin and lessens the need to build additional power plants.”  

Wisconsin also has a carbon free goal - "In partnership with state agencies and state utilities, achieve a goal of ensuring all electricity consumed within the State of Wisconsin is 100 percent carbon-free by 2050."

Utility bills and meters provide a perfect gateway into examining household energy use and can be a great way to learn how different choices and technologies impact energy use and expense. 

We would like to replace the fluorescent lights in the 6th-grade classrooms with LED bulbs. LEDs are a better choice for the environment because they are mercury free and use less energy. They are also better for eye health, because they don't emit blue light. Some fluorescent lights will flicker, causing eye strain, which LEDs do not. Switching to LEDs will offer a savings of $283.04 in the first year. This project will pay itself off by a little less than 2 years. We also discovered that it would save the same amount of carbon dioxide as driving a gas powered vehicle from our school to Jacksonville, Florida!

Starting in the winter of 2024, Dodgeville High School’s Save the Rainforest club has had our “Reduced Waste Lunch Line” going. Since then, we have had a system in our lunch room to properly sort plastic bags, milk cartons, recycling products, landfill waste, and most importantly, compostable material. This has decreased our carbon footprint by reducing the amount of waste in landfills and incinerators, while also serving to educate students and staff on proper waste disposal. This project will update the system with new bins and better signage. 

Maple Grove Charter School

Power Patrol: Checking and Changing to Save Energy!

We're on a mission to save energy at our school! 🏫⚡ First, we’ll find out how much power our classrooms use (including sneaky "energy vampires"🧛 ♂️ 🧛 ♂️ ). Then, we'll use smart power strips and schoolwide education to cut down on waste. This means lower electric bills, a greener school, and a smaller carbon footprint! 🌎💚 Every switch flipped and plug unplugged helps our planet! 

We plan to provide the school with clean energy through a solar panel. This solar panel will charge Chromebooks as needed. In a survey in the future classroom, 90% of students said they would access the charger, and 10% said they would rely on it. Because our school primarily uses natural gas, we expect this to reduce our carbon footprint, a task taken very seriously by our club. This initiative will promote sustainability, raise environmental awareness, and save money in the long term.

O’Keeffe Middle School community is working to reduce our carbon footprint by implementing a cafeteria food waste composting program! Currently, about 20% of all the trash in landfills is food waste. On average, schools produce 39 pounds of food waste per student per year. By composting our cafeteria food waste, we’ll reduce landfill waste as well as reduce methane production and the atmospheric warming it causes.