Your school can enter the Climate Challenge at any time in the school year. The climate actions submitted must have been taken from September 1, 2012 until April 30, 2013 (anytime during the current school year)

Collecting data can be a timely process. Contact us if you need help! In the meantime, there are many actions that you can do to earn points in the Climate Challenge.

The GHG calculator requires Adobe Flash Player version 9 (or later versions) be installed on your school or home computer.

Students will be gathering data on heating fuels, electricity, paper consumption, landfill waste, and water and land use for as many years as possible to create a GHG inventory.

We do our best to have our Champions visit rural schools with Champion presentations provided on a first come, first serve basis. All schools regardless of location are invited to get involved in HSCC and share their best practices with other school communities. Simply contact us to get your school setup. Don't forget to complete as many climate actions as you can to win a special Champion presentation or enter our video contest to win prizes!

Detailed data on school consumption measures and cost is password-protected and only viewable to Climate Challenge participants at your school. More general per capita benchmark data on water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will be made public to allow schools to share and compare.

The calculator will chart your energy use and GHG emissions by source. Information will be provided on a per m2 basis (great data for school administrators to use as benchmarks) and per capita basis (students will know their individual carbon footprint as a member of the school community). With enough data, the tool will give feedback that shows where (and when) success has been made with energy conservation and waste minimization measures and where GHG reductions are possible in the future.

Having as many years of data as possible allows benchmark data to be used to make projections (futuristic estimates) of how energy consumption or GHG emissions will change when energy-reducing strategies or carbon reduction projects are implemented in your school. This information will be useful when planning projects and setting specific targets.

Total energy consumption will be normalized by climate region using heating degree day data from Environment Canada, as described below: The amount of energy your school consumes will change each year based on the weather (daily temperatures) in your city each year and is reflected by how much energy was required to heat or cool your school.Since school is generally not in session over the summer, the amount of energy to cool (air condition) your school is not as significant as the energy your school uses for heating. To recognize that one year had an increase in energy use because it was a particularly cold year (or another year had a decrease because it was warmer than average), we need to know what constitutes a warm year or a cold year. To do this, we've collected heating and cooling degree day data from Environment Canada's online Climate Data service for most major cities in Canada. Heating degree days and cooling degree days are a measure of temperature in terms of how much heating or cooling is necessary for buildings to be a standard indoor temperature (18 degrees C). Degree days are included in the calculator as a mechanism to normalize results by climate to give a clearer idea of heating efficiency. Because climate varies dramatically across provinces and regions, degree days are entered by city. When your school signs up for HSCC, a climate region (city) will be assigned that automatically has the appropriate degree day values.