Chula Vista’s Climate Action Plan has been in place for over 15 years. For this growing Southern California city, the Georgetown University Energy Prize provides an opportunity to measure its progress against other sustainable cities throughout the nation. Chula Vista has a long history of successful community partnerships, but securing participation still posed a challenge. The city created a number of marketing materials to support the effort, including flyers, posters, social media posts, custom emails and a webpage to help raise awareness of the competition. The marketing materials ask residents to commit to three energy-saving actions, which now serve as a basis for city-led assistance.

“Participating in the Georgetown University Energy Prize allowed us to spotlight the great energy-saving actions our residents have taken while encouraging them to commit to do more to help our city win,” says Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas. “The idea of winning the prize also gave our staff new ways to engage residents about improving energy savings in their homes.”

In the first year of the competition, Chula Vista engaged over 200 households, and more than 150 of those received a no-cost home energy and water check-up. Over 90 percent of those households took energy-saving action ranging from simple behavior changes to complex whole-home energy upgrades.

The city also teaches the community about the importance of water conservation and its link to energy conservation. City staff leveraged other programs, such as turf replacement, to provide energy-efficiency resources and information about LED lights, new windows and insulation. By providing information on multiple areas of interest, such as energy, water, waste, recycling and compost in one home visit, Chula Vista engages residents in the wide variety of sustainability initiatives that the city offers.

This story is part of a Western City article on the Georgetown Energy Prize. Click here to access the full article.