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Santa Fe County is currently ranked 7th and 8th respectively in the “Drive Smarter” and “Power It Down” national energy-conservation challenges out of 3,066 counties.  The event ends November 30th and Commissioner Virginia Vigil is challenging residents and staff to make Santa Fe County the top energy-saving county in America.  “I believe we have the most responsible energy users in the country” says Commissioner Vigil “Power IT Down and Drive Smarter are ways for us to show how our community is on the cutting edge of energy conservation.”

Individuals from over 100 unique government entities across federal, state, and local agencies have already signed up.  Over 1,200 in total have already shown their commitment to power IT down.  This equals an estimated energy savings of more than 16,000-kilowatt hours -- and more are signing up every day.

For background, the Power IT Down Day concept will reduce unnecessary power usage with one simple adjustment to the work habits of government and industry employees: on August 27, as people leave their workstations for the evening, they should power down their computers, monitors, and printers instead of allowing these devices to sit idle.  Across the government landscape, the benefit from this one simple action can be enormous.

The Alliance to Save Energy has launched Drive $marter Challenge, a fuel-efficiency campaign to help U.S. consumers lower their gasoline costs by using less.  The campaign offers effective money- and gas-saving tips in English and Spanish and extensive additional resources – all aimed at keeping more money in drivers’ pockets and reducing the number of costly trips to the pump.

The campaign has the only interactive website (www.drivesmarterchallenge.org) with a calculator allowing drivers to enter specific data on their vehicle (make, model, year, cylinders) and find out exactly how much money they can save with up to six easy vehicle maintenance and sensible driving steps.

To highlight the campaign’s social aspect, the calculator also displays a running tally of the cumulative money, gallons, and CO2 emission savings of everyone who has “taken the Challenge” by pledging to follow through on any or all of those fuel-saving steps.  The calculator thus demonstrates that even small fuel-efficiency steps by large numbers of people add up to measurable benefits.

As a reward, each visitor committing to the Challengecan download one or more money-saving coupons for vehicle maintenance products – including oxygen sensors, air filters, and spark plugs – redeemable at AutoZone, a campaign partner.

The campaign website also features links to extensive resources ranging from where to find the cheapest local gas to information on public transportation, biking, car sharing, and carpooling.

On a broader scale, the campaign will enhance U.S. energy security by reducing our dependence on imported oil, and it will improve the global environment by reducing CO2 emissions.  Residents can learn more about it by visiting www.hp.com/go/poweritdownand http://drivesmarterchallenge.org/.