UVA’s Office for Sustainability hosted the second annual “Break Up With Your Space Heater” campaign to encourage faculty, staff, and students to trade in their space heaters for electric heating pads.
By 4th year student Jamilla Peng.
UVA’s Office for Sustainability hosted the second annual “Break Up With Your Space Heater” campaign this spring. As part of climate action at UVA, this campaign encouraged UVA faculty, staff, and students to trade in their space heaters for electric heating pads.
Space heaters are extremely energy-intensive and unsustainable both financially and environmentally. The huge energy consumption generates more greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating pollution and climate change. Furthermore, space heaters can raise potential safety concerns for people and their surroundings due to fire risk.
In fact, UVA has prohibited using space heaters on Grounds due to safety hazards, energy consumption, and high carbon emission. Compared with a traditional space heater, an electric heating pad uses just one-tenth of the energy but still heats effectively. Switching to electric heating pads not only reduces electricity bills and safety hazards but also helps improve environmental quality.
Results
Through this spring’s campaign, UVA’s Office for Sustainability collected 11 space heaters which were then donated to local organizations around Charlottesville, and in exchange, participants received a free heating pad to use instead. This is in addition to the 26 space heaters that were swapped out in 2022. When some participants traded in their space heaters, they completed a survey, with 21 responses total across the two years. The survey showed that these 21 participants previously used their space heater for 432 hours per person per year on average.
Savings
Assuming that participants use electric heating pads for the same amount of time after the swap, we calculated that UVA could save $1054 per year, or $50 per person per year. Moreover, we calculated that 11,092 kilowatt-hours would be saved annually, which is approximately the average electricity consumption for an American household for an entire year. Approximately 6.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent would be avoided each year, which shows how even individual actions will be important for achieving UVA’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030.
If you have a space heater on Grounds and are ready to help save energy and comply with UVA policy, you can contact [email protected] about swapping out for an electric heating pad. We really appreciate everyone who broke up with their space heater during the campaign!
Jamilla Peng is a rising 4th-year student at UVA studying Economics and History with a minor in Global Sustainability. She works as a Sustainability Outreach Intern in the Office for Sustainability, particularly engaging in coordinating among groups and promoting events. She is especially interested in proper waste disposal and recycling.