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June 9, 2009
Power the Games Tour: cheerleading with a message
Posted by Rob Klovance
They wake people up at BC Hydro quarterly meetings. They prefer high-fives over handshakes, dancing over dozing. They ask a whole lot of questions, celebrate your answers, right and wrong, and are as kid-friendly as mascots (and not half as scary.)
They are BC Hydro's Community Outreach reps, and at more than 50 stops around B.C. for the Power the Games Tour, they're going to urge you to enter a dark room to be enlightened.
The Power the Games Conservation Lab is a sort of theatre on wheels. Inside, you'll find three big LCD screens and a bunch of glowing buttons. And over the course of a few minutes, you will learn all sorts of things about electricity conservation you didn't know, and you'll see some amazing images of Olympians and Paralympians in action.
You will exit the lab and, if you're not already a member of Team Power Smart, you will become one. Because by that time, you will be seduced, convinced, by Outreach staff. They may act like cheerleaders at times, but there's method to their gladness.
Ask them tough questions. They're up to it, and if they don't have the answer, they'll seek it out for you.
They know how much money you'll save over the lifetime of a CFL bulb, and you may be shocked to learn just how much money that is. I won't tell you here, because it may just be a question in the test you'll take in the Conservation Lab - yeah, that's what those buttons are for.
Join the team and we will all be one person closer to our challenge of 210,000 Team Power Smart members by 2010. And in case you're wondering why 210,000, and why the "Power the Games" messaging, this should help.
The 210,000 figure has a great ring to it, given that BC Hydro is an official supporter of the 2010 Winter Games and is giving away Games tickets via contests for Team Power Smart members. And if those 210,000 cut their electricity use an average of 10%, it more or less would save enough electricity to power the Games.
But as proud as we are that we're about to deliver a Games powered by clean power rather than by diesel generators, that's not really what this is about. It's about an important first step toward two ambitious BC Energy Plan goals. One is B.C. electricity self-sufficiency by 2016, and the other is to offset - through conservation - 50% of the estimated increase in electricity demand in B.C. by 2020.
So if saving $50, $100 or more each year on your BC Hydro bills isn't enough to convince you to commit to a 10% saving and join Team Power Smart, perhaps the future of the province's energy supply is more compelling. Even if you don't need the extra cash, we need your help.
Not convinced? Come out to a B.C. community event this summer, check out the Conservation Lab and talk to an Outreach rep. They're fun, very informed, and very convincing.
One last thing. If you happen to be wondering about how eco-friendly a tour can be when it involves towing a big trailer - the Conservation Lab - thousands of kilometres around B.C., well, Outreach has that covered, too. The truck pulling the Lab is a hybrid, the team is buying carbon offsets, and those blow-up, plastic thundersticks they're handing out, well, they're biodegradable.
Like I said: this Outreach crew has its act together.
Rob Klovance is managing editor of bchydro.com.
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Source: BC Hydro
