In partnership with the District of Columbia’s Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE) and the Institute for Better Communities (IFBC), SWA is implementing DC’s first multifamily housing energy and water challenge.
What is the POWER DOWN DC Challenge?
POWER DOWN DC is a 4 month building-to-building, education focused competition in Washington, DC with a goal of empowering building residents and staff to change behavior and reduce overall energy and water usage. Residents compete as a building team against other apartment buildings to hit a reduction target and strive to make the greatest overall reduction.
Driving Savings through Friendly Competition
The basic concept is simple: bringing people together for friendly competition is more likely to encourage meaningful action than simply providing information about energy and water efficiency alone. By joining the competition, participants try to reduce their own energy and water use and help members of their apartment community do the same. Residents will be encouraged to make a commitment to efficiency and take simple steps every day that collectively will have a big payoff. Actions like turning off lights, fixing a leak, and taking shorter showers, multiplied across dozens of apartment units will have quick results. In DC, residential buildings make up 20% of total energy use and 23% of total water use. If all multi-family residents take action, we can save 83,000,000 kilowatt hours (KWH) of energy, 96,000,000 gallons of water, and $31, 400,000 dollars annually. Small steps = big savings.
