By Nicholas White

Are you someone that enjoys a challenge? How about saving money? Ever dream of saving the world while saving money? University of New Hampshire and Clean Air-Cool Planet joined up to give you that very chance! Enter the New England Carbon Challenge. This unique challenge was created in order to educate, inspire and support reductions in residential carbon emissions. The New England Carbon challenge was originally the New Hampshire Carbon challenge but other states wanted a piece of the action and joined in during the summer of 2009. Homes that have joined the challenge have been saving an average of $750 a year on fuel and electrical costs which is roughly a 20% decrease in energy consumption!

Ok so this sounds great, but how does one join the challenge? The New England Carbon challenge website, http://necarbonchallenge.org/about.jsp, explains all about the challenge. Included on the site is a Carbon calculator which estimates and helps identify what actions you can take to reduce emissions in your home. The calculator takes into account electrical emissions, vehicle emissions, heating and hot water emissions and recycling and waste reduction emissions. This simple tool takes about 15 – 20 minutes and after using the calculator. According to Dow “You’ll need your energy bills handy. After that initial step, you could spend a lifetime adjusting and refining your relationship with energy to shrink your footprint. But every great journey begins with a single step, which is usually the hardest and most important one. You can achieve a 20% reduction with very basic changes and only a small investment.” The site offers a ten step process for launching a challenge event in your local community as well as an online form that registers which community has lost the greatest amount of C02. Concord, NH ranks number one on the list with Portsmouth, NH and Keene, NH rounding out the top three. As of November 12, there have been 17,120,423 total pounds of CO2 reduced by all challengers! Gary Dow of Clean Air- Cool Planet says that “most of the energy saved comes through simple conservation (driving less or keeping your house slightly cooler) and efficiency (weatherizing a heat-leaky house or switching to LED light bulbs.”

The NECC was created two years ago as the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge and while starting figuring out how to reach the most possible people was the greatest obstacle. With the information that 40% of energy use comes from residential energy use the creators knew they had a great opportunity to reduce an enormous portion of the energy use by appealing to people at home. Using the web has allowed a small staff to reach out to a large number of people and efficiently spread the word about the system. Dow says that one of the greatest difficulties is educating people on the link between energy and carbon. The site strives to first educate its users and then offer them easy ways to affect real change socially, economically, intellectually and ethically.

The New England Carbon Challenge is an incredible opportunity for families, businesses and whole communities to make a positive impact on the planet. It will be one of the most important fifteen minutes of your day, and by taking the challenge you will join thousands of other New Englanders working to cut down their carbon emissions.