Exeter, NH (November 9, 2006)—More than 100 students, faculty and staff from 15 schools and seven states will attend the first annual “Green Cup Challenge” conference on Sunday, November 12, 2006, from 8:00 a.m.- 4:15 p.m., at Phillips Exeter Academy. This event is not open to the public.

The Green Cup Challenge competition is an athletic-style energy conservation test, aimed at making students, faculty and staff aware of their electricity use and helping them find ways to conserve. The school that decreases its electricity consumption by the largest percentage over the 30 days will be declared the winner.

This year’s competition is a month-long energy conservation contest between 15 schools in the Northeast: Phillips Academy, in Andover, MA; Choate Rosemary Hall, in Wallingford, CT; Darrow School, in New Lebanon, NY; Deerfield Academy, in Deerfield, MA; Holderness School, in Holderness, NH; The Hotchkiss School, in Lakeville, CT; The Lawrenceville School, in Lawrenceville, NJ; Millbrook School, in Millbrook, NY; Northfield Mt. Hermon School in Northfield, MA; Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, NH; Proctor Academy, in Andover, NH; The Putney School, in Putney, VT; St. George’s School, in Newport, RI; Stoneleigh-Burnham, in Greenfield, MA; and St. Paul’s School, in Concord, NH.

The conference will introduce and educate Green Cup Challenge participants on how to collect and calculate electrical energy consumption; global warming and the role of energy consumption; the fundamentals of electrical energy; how to incorporate the Green Cup Challenge into the classroom; how to involve the media; and help students, faculty and staff to get involved in the challenge. Representatives will play a critical role in their school’s success in the challenge.

PEA Sustainability Coordinator Jennifer Wilhelm, one of the conference’s originators, explains its mission. “The challenge is an opportunity for institutions to directly address the issue of global warming. The conference is an opportunity for people to network and share ideas with other institutions that are working on sustainability, and learn how to create movement on their campuses. It’s also a great time to build momentum and excitement. The mission of the conference is to get everyone on the same page about how the competition works. I’m hopeful this will be the first of many sustainability conferences,” she says. Each year the conference will be held at one of the participating schools

This year’s challenge, held from January 28 to February 25, 2007, will be the fourth annual Green Cup, and the second annual inter-school competition. Earlier matches were among dormitories and buildings on Exeter’s campus.

By expanding the challenge and incorporating other schools, the focus has moved to a campus-wide competition for all members of the community. Each school’s facilities management team will measure electrical energy consumption through metering of each building on campus. Overall, campus electricity will be measured first during a “quiet metering” period to get baseline numbers. The monitoring will continue during the challenge.

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory school that was founded in 1781 and originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, students come from a wide variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds. The diverse student body comes from approximately 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands and 26 foreign countries.

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