World Student Community for Sustainable Development

by Philip Michael Sheehy

The Residential Energy Use (REU) project ” a partnership between MIT and the City of Cambridge ” will take its first active step on September 13th, 2003 when members of SfGS march out into Cambridge to conduct surveys and pass out information.

The first stage of the REU project has SfGS promoting the replacement of incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. CFL bulbs use only a quarter of the amount of energy as regular bulbs, save the consumer money, and last much longer than ordinary bulbs. As part of Graduate Student Volunteer Day — an opportunity for graduate students to get out of the laboratory and into the community — members of our group, and other volunteers from the MIT community will set up booths at 3 or 4 different locations in Cambridge to conduct surveys of community members, and provide information about residential energy use. The survey will provide the means for our group to measure the communityâ€^TMs understanding of CFL bulbs, and residential energy use, in general. We will also get an indication of the number of households that have CFL bulbs installed. Basically, our survey will provide a baseline of community information that will enable us to track the successes and failures of our ongoing project (see below for the finalized version of the survey). Similarly, we will be handing out a small pamphlet, containing information about the advantages of CFL bulbs, the cost, where to buy them, etc.

This is a great first step for our project, and demonstrates the level of commitment that SfGS has made to aid in the implementation of the Cambridge Climate Protection Plan. We look forward to reporting the results of the survey, and updating the WSC-SD community on the ongoing success of the REU project in the next e-Journal.

Philip Michael Sheehy