all right so first of all let's talk about the georgetown university energy prize competition and if you all are currently aware the city of holland is in a competition between fifty other cities across the nation over who can save the most electricity and gas usage much like the energy wars and essential e this competition whoever wins georgetown university will provide them with five million dollars and currently holland is actually for second in this competition so doing things like this like the energy wars game the community involved getting the youth involved especially in these fun creative ways is exactly how we're going to win this competition so as you can see right there those are all the cities participating currently you can see holland up in that corner right there i was born in utah is right there we have compete and we have a lot of come where the compiler there is like asking colorado i believe we're tied with them for second or they may be first this competition actually ends at the end of this year so we have been doing outstandingly well so far we have the hall and forty year plan we also have the new natural gas plant all coming in to make our community a more sustainable place so as regards of who exactly wins and how do you when it's over who can again like i said decrease the most elections the gas usage and we want to promote that especially through education getting getting the youth involved so when they get into adulthood to promote saving energy as well to create more sustainable likelihood is great as well and a big part about this competition is creating innovative scal couple ways to save energy around a community as well because we're only considering our future and why hall and it's the whole quote that we say is five million dollars in change we get five million dollars if we win and the change we've got to change our community we've got to change our future for the better and right now we do have the head start with their community energy plan a forty year plan trying to reduce our energy usage we're actually one of the lower carbon footprint cities i believe right now we are at twenty five and our goal is to get roughly around thirteen before two thousand and twenty christian over who can save most electric electricity and gas usage so like a mini georgetown university press competition so this event was through january through march and it had ended that and this was completely ran by b p w energy tracking that electricity and gas usage personally doing this competition i learned a lot about my community i learned a lot about what students moat what motivated students to save energy what motivated faculty the save energy as well it was a really fun process and i believe that we're going to have a lot of fun tonight giving away some free stuff giving away a traveling trophy will be revealed as well so right now we have de coster coming in from the home of public works that will share a few words really nice and i think the kids really deserve a round of applause for everything they've done to put this event together there's a lot of work here you know in terms of you know the efforts of trying to engage your school to save energy i'm excited to hear about the stories that come up and they're coming up here in a little bit and it is about fun you know this is  it's a lot of work but it's a lot of fun to figure out how to do this in a way that engages people and and i just enjoy you know getting out and talking to the kids in the high schools in gauging within the how b p w has done that a lot over the last few years through through energy savings actually talking with and sellers who's in the back of the room and you know and heads up what's called our energy optimization program and every year we have to try to figure out ways of getting businesses and residents to use less electricity help them save that and we actually partnered with both holland and west ottawa's robotics programs over the last couple years to sell light bulbs or actually we bought the light bulbs from them and distribute them into the community and over six thousand six hundred light bulbs have gone into homes in our community which have helped us achieve the savings and so it's partnering with the schools in ways like that is really really neat and so i don't know who was here earlier to see some of the videos that were going on as well it's another fun way of engaging the community and it's just been a great process so as tony talked about you know this is one element in a long range plan and holland has a very structured plan for the next forty years you know we're looking we started this plan in two thousand and ten with a lot of help from at that time our sustainability community committee who went out and sought some support  actually commissioning a plan and that plan established a framework for a set that point that did give us those goals you talked about trying to get from twenty four metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita you know down close to ten you know after that forty year period and so a lot of work has to happen for that to to be achieved and a lot of work is going on the community is i think far ahead of any other community we talk about those forty nine others but really in terms of the effort you know holland is putting forward a lot of effort to make that happen and so you know we do want to become a thriving world class energy efficient city that generates energy cleanly and talk a little bit about how we're doing that here coming up and then using it efficiently is about the usage side and what the kids can do in the schools as well as what we can do in our businesses and homes to make ourselves as efficient as possible and then obviously being reliable and affordable at the same time so  big plan three main overriding goals to make sure that we're competitive from an economic standpoint we want to make sure that we still attract businesses to our community and that we have affordable energy for our  community and so that reliable and for doubles that next thing and ultimately also being pro protective of the environment and so you know we want holland to be that city everybody wants to come to to grow their business to live and energy efficiency and sustainability is a big a big factor in that process so what did what we've been doing since two thousand and ten there's been a lot of work being done we talk about seven different task forces out there looking at how we generate electricity in our community you know whether or not we can use heat that comes from our electric generation process to heat homes and businesses we already know that we're going to use some of it for snow melt everybody loves snow melt in the wintertime being able to walk around downtown or we're going to grow that district as well down central avenue someone once st when the construction takes place this next summer and this coming summer and then also looking at things like home energy retrofits for example just a tremendous amount of work and again thanks to a lot of people in the room especially and down trees and paul lilly as well you know that have been very involved in helping to structure a program that allows homeowners to actually do retrofits of their home and place that loan repayment right on their electric bill and there's a lot of value that comes from that because you can see both elements you can see the cost of th decrease you know energy on your bill and help facilitate things with that you know labeling our buildings you know going out and actually saying hey these are improvements i made and i think the schools would love to do that as well to be able to showcase this is my energy per square foot that we're using here and kind of set the standard and so that's one thing too through education and that in awareness and then you know just making sure that we also engage not just our residential sector but our commercial and industrial buildings and so there's a ton of work going on in the community ted to have that happen and there's already been a tremendous all amount of progress that's been made and some of these things are actually going into you know the bill financing and home energy retrofits are going to be actually started up here will actually start being able to offer loans and put those on the bills as of july or august this year so it's pretty exciting you know the work that's going on and then you know you do know you tony mentioned the holland energy park it's a great it's an historic time for our community in holland has generated power since eight hundred ninety three when the hauen b p w first went into existence and we had a very significant milestone last week many of you probably heard that at our coal plant the james the young plant we stop burning coal and so we're done in the community here with coal we still have some coal in our portfolio of resources because we own part of plants outside of how and but our predominant energy source in our community is moving away from the coal and moving to our new hauen energy part now talk about that a little bit but also not just those two elements there's actually also a lot of renewable resources in our portfolio we have some contracts for wind power we have some contracts for power coming from landfill gas and so that makes up about fifteen percent roughly of our of our mix but how an energy park is going to be a big piece of our energy supply for our community and the kind of thing that we expect to be able to support our community for many decades to come energy park is also going to be a very neat thing for people in the community students as well as the general community to come in and experience in a lot of different ways for those you don't know the whole energy park has that red spine that runs through the building there that's actually going to be a visitor center we often get a lot of school groups that want to come through and tour the coal plant we expect there's going to be even more that want to come to an energy park so we're go up actually interactive and static exhibits in there to talk about energy you know how to use it efficiently why that's important why it should matter to you as well as talk about the technology and how energy park park is going to be  very very efficient piece of equipment for for our community it's actually going to reduce carbon dioxide by fifty percent over the existing sources of energy supply that we had in natural gas there is no sulfur so there's no software dioxide emissions the acid rain that can come from software dioxide we're essentially eliminating soffer dioxide from that and also nitrogen oxides which can form ozone in the summertime are going to be reduced by ninety percent all of that along with being able to use the waste heat for a beneficial use you know sets holland up for opportunity for a very affordable efficient clean power supply for our for our community long term and so you have some pictures here you can see how far along we are this is a very recent picture on the bottom and so the building is nearing completion and the plant is supposed to be mechanically complete by the end of august and we're going to be starting up our first generator there for testing in september and so that'll be very exciting we'll have ribbon cutting for the plant probably in june of and seventeen and so i'm very excited about having all of you come out and tour it be able to see what's going on the visitor center and if you want to stay tuned into that you know there's a link on here which you can't see the link but if you go b w dot com there is a link to what's called p twenty one that's been where we've tracked all the information about this plant development encourage all of you to go there and there's a live video feed on that link as well so you can check it out any time or if you also like to go to the site off from fairbanks you drive in behind the co's x where the euro's are there you can actually go to an observation platform and watch the cranes in action and watch everything going on so a very exciting time but i'm most excited tonight to hear about what the schools have done because as you mentioned georgetown university prize were right there ready to win that i think we've got the best plan we've had the most in gauge men of all the kids i want to celebrate as well a lot of these kids have been involved with going door to door in our community and actually knocking on everybody's door to let them know about what's called super tips ok very straightforward five easy tips that you can do to save energy they've knocked on how many doors if they have they got into and do you know it's it's like fifty four hundred homes in our community have been done because of these kids so not only does that teach them about energy efficiency but it also gives them a lot of life skills in terms of interfacing with our community you know speaking skills and so to to really kind of step out there and do that you know you really are to be congratulated for that so thank you for putting the savan together asking me and inviting me to come speak i'm very excited to hear your stories next and look forward to who the winner is going to be but that's just this year's winner so it sets the mark for the future years so even if you're not that school you know next year is right around the corner so maternal back over to tony or  so again with the energy wars if you guys didn't know exactly what is it stands for holland youth advisory council it's ran by the city of holland i got into about four years ago i'm a senior this year their goal is to kind of get the youth involved to represent their community to make the community a better place so our special committee is called the special events committee and we tackle a lot of different topics a lot of different events over my four years here we partnered with barnabas ministries the markets how watershed and obviously this year with georgetown i think it's great that our youth is getting involved with tackling saving energy around our community because it really helps us create a more sustainable future so what consists of our commitment of our committee we have representatives from about each high school within the city of holland and we have a representative from each of those schools to talk about what exactly they did to benefit this competition so hall in ok so for our school to promote the event we we put a video that our special events committee created and we put in chapel and let the students watch it had daily announcements and we kept the students like well represented we like showed them and we told them how every school was doing as well as two actually do stuff for the actual competition we turned off one of the lights in every single room as well as opening up the blinds to let in natural light and we turned off the outlets when we weren't using them in the science room and we also saved energy in our room by turning off the kiln and just not using it because it takes up a lot of energy and we also had students outside of school get in to gather in groups and did some calculations and research to see what it's like to save energy in our school and we heard lots of students throughout the hallways talking about it and just wanted to hear more about it so that's what represent i ever won i'm from black river and i'm in tenth grade and this is my first year on holland youth advisory council and our school is a lot smaller than a lot of the other schools in this competition so that's kind of our  vantage but our school also has a lot of windows so we try to promote teachers as and we tried to warn them that you only need one satellites on because we have a lot of windows also with  of the time we noticed that projectors were left on so we encourage teachers to turn off their projector when they're not using it and we also since teachers at our school have control of the temperature in their classrooms we encourage them to lower the temperature a little bit and tony and i went around to each cap room which is like a home room at other schools and we just kind of gave background on what our project was and some tips of like sometimes students like to charge their phones a school or and they'll leave it you know some tips at home as well like you leave your plugged in but if you unplug it and you save more energy and also through media ourselves like we posted i know tony posted a lot on twitter and we tried to get students involved as much as we could but that's what our school hi everybody my name is mckenna bago and i'm a junior at holland high school so what are school did is we have an announcement video that plays over the whole school and it's called the flash we had  our student news put videos up an announcement up on the flash explaining what the energy war is it is and what they can do to help we gave them tempests like unplugging their chargers when they're not using them because our school uses chrome books and so we advise them to charge them at home or charge their cell phones at home so they're not using energy at school we turned off a lot of lights  holland public are automatic but they are also manual so instead of having to wait for the lights to turn off on their own we could also turn them off ourselves if we're not in the classroom like black river we also have temperatures in each classroom which the teachers can change themselves and so we had them turn them down and just the school overall like in the cafeteria where we turn down the temperature and posters we posted the energy were posters all over the school wherever he could to get the word out to the students ata one of our biggest challenges was getting faculty and administration involved because we do have a bunch of different principles at each building so caroline who couldn't make it tonight and i made our goal to get the word out to the students and we did so through w o b n which is our student broadcasting network which plays the news every morning and we were able to get videos and tips and announcements and almost every day throughout the competition and we hung up a lot of posters and we tried to go to classrooms and share tips with students and yet hope that then the brick all right so we have a bit of a gap time before we start announcing winners of the teachers and students so i encourage you all to go look at those boots eat some more food coffee punch everything you want a sensually and just have a good time yeah thanks committee we're going to have them come up to the front and introduce themselves tell you all which school they come from what grade they are and how long they have been in if they had come down this  hope i'm a senior and this is my second year high do you do you want prizes or not you guys want prizes so we're going to go ahead and announce which faculty member from the school and which student won for these prizes for pe teacher is carl of unfasten but he is not here today he could not make it for his son who is having a softball or football baseball team thing but our holland hi student is olds and also we have an announcement from the mayor she actually wrote a statement for hall and energy that we'd like to read off for you right now so it's a proclamation written by board if you are all not aware currently she's our newly elected mayor so all the videos of her dikes just replace her face all right so the city of holland michigan proclamation whereas a sound natural environment is the foundation of a healthy society and a robust economy and whereas human activities around the globe are causing severe environmental damage damage that threatens human health and our plants ability to sustain a diverse community of life and whereas local communities can and have done much to reverse environmentalists that gregg ation and contribute to building a healthy and sustainable society by adjusting issues such as recycling energy use transportation waste prevention and sprawl and whereas earth day offers an opportunity to commit to commit to building a healthy planet flourishing communities and empowering citizens and whereas earth day two thousand six scene is the beginning of a new year for environmental c s two or chip for implementing sustainability efforts and committing to an earth day resolution furthermore let it be known that the city of holland here by encourages its residents businesses and facilities to use earth day to celebrate earth and commit to building a sustainable and green economy now therefore i not actually mayor nancy de vore of city of hall of the city of holland michigan due here by a pledge on this earth day april twenty second two thousand and sixteen to support green economy initiatives in the city all right so you all want to win surprises before we give you all prizes you want to know which school won first for a travelling trophy right all right we're going to give away the trophy  essentially if you want to know the statistics for this again this was calculated over electrical and gas usage and this was conducted by b p w and some co energy and how it worked it was over three months so let's say we had january we would take the statistic of how much gas usage we use that money that month and we would compare it we would compare it to the past years january's their average and compare how much we decreased or maybe increased so we have some examples up here as well if you wanted to know we save about thirty nine thousand therms of gas usage and  about one hundred eighty thousand kilowatt hours of electricity so we have a lot to do with saving our community and we hope that we can replicate this competition so our schools and our individual homes can save energy as well to provide for a better hol so we're going to announce the schools fund for their day and first place yet we're starting with a fourth place school so a fourth place school with a total energy read to reduction negative nine percent is how in public our third place winner with a total i would auction eleven percent would be black river so we may reveal the trophy now the travelling trophy will go to west and on the side plaque can be replaced for each school whenever whichever