Georgetown University to Give $5M Community Energy Prize

Georgetown University is offering a $5 million community energy prize to tap the imagination, creativity, and competitive spirit of  communities nationwide in developing sustainable energy-saving innovations.

Over 65 percent of American communities, home to more than 200 million U.S. residents, are eligible to apply. The community population must be between 5,000 and 250,000.

Through this competition, communities will be challenged to work together with their local governments and utilities  to develop and begin implementing plans for innovative, replicable, scalable and continual reductions in the per capita energy consumed from local natural gas and electric utilities.

Participating communities will be asked to develop long-term energy efficiency plans and to demonstrate initial effectiveness and sustainability over a two-year period. Communities will be judged in part on their ability to:

The competition begins in 2015, finalists will be announced in 2017, and the awards presented later in 2017.

STAGE 1: April – June, 2014 – Applications:  Click here to Get Started.

STAGE 2: August – November, 2014 – Quarterfinalist Energy Efficiency Program Plans:  Quarterfinalists will each submit a detailed plan for their community’s energy-saving program.  These should be long-term plans, with commitments by residential associations, governments, institutions, or businesses in the community to policies and projects that will yield continual improvement.

STAGE 3: January 2015 – December 2016 – Semifinalist Performance Competition: the Semifinalists will compete for 2 years to reduce their utility-supplied energy consumption in a manner that is likely to yield continuing improvements within their own community and replication in other communities.

STAGE 4: January – June, 2017 – Finalist Selection, Judging and Awards: Finalists will be selected based primarily on energy-saving performance during Stage 3. The highest-ranking community will be awarded first place, with the requirement that the prize purse benefit the community at large in accordance with spending proposed in the community’s Stage 2 Program Plan.  Second and third place will also be awarded; these additional winners will receive special recognition and additional benefits, which may include cash purses.

More on this energy efficiency request