The Green Cup Energy Challenge has now been going on for nearly two weeks. Around the three campuses, students and faculty have helped lower the school’s carbon emissions by turning off nonessential lights, charging laptops before school and unplugging printers or projectors when leaving campus.

The Green Cup Energy Challenge is an international competition designed to promote the reduction of energy usage during a designated period of time. Though schools and businesses from around the world participate in this challenge, most of the competitors are from the United States.

This is the third year St. George’s has been participating in this demand response. However, this year, Mr. William McClain, upper school science teacher and coordinator for these events, has chosen to enter the Germantown, Memphis and Collierville campuses as separate schools.

Within the first week of the competition, the Collierville Campus managed to reduce their energy usage by 3.9 percent while the Germantown Campus reduced their usage by 9.7 percent, earning a fourth place ranking nationally for the Germantown Campus. Trumping the competition, the Memphis Campus managed to reduce their energy consumption by 15.6 percent.

Mr. McClain said the energy reduction at the Memphis Campus was “the best week-one performance among all of the schools across the country” via an email to the three St. George’s campuses.

Though the Collierville Campus is lacking in their energy reduction at the moment, there are still two weeks remaining in the competition for our reduction percentage to rise.