PSE Environmental Education Program for Kids Celebrates 15-Year Anniversary

Puget Sound Energy’s Powerful Choices for the Environment (Powerful Choices), a cooperative in-classroom educational program that teaches Washington state middle school students how their actions impact the environment, recently celebrated its 15-year anniversary at an event at PSE’s Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility near Ellensburg, Wash.

"It’s gratifying to know and note that Powerful Choices has been in existence long enough now to see the same middle school students reach adulthood and pass their learning on to their own children,” said Cal Shirley, vice president of Energy Efficiency Services for PSE, the program’s primary partner. "By teaching responsibility to members of our community when they are young, their behavioral changes result in longer and more lasting environmental outcomes.”

Leslie Hoelting, a participating teacher from Langley Middle School who attended the anniversary celebration, also expressed appreciation for Powerful Choices’ "presentation of environmental issues in a positive light that concentrates on how students can help the environment rather than how they hurt it” – a trait she finds unique to the program.

Program partners and staff, participating teachers, and students and their parents attended the celebration event, which included a review of the program’s history, an annual update for partner organizations, curriculum review with teachers and facilitators, and testimonials by participants. A tour of PSE’s wind facility and lunch (with an anniversary cake decorated with turbines) concluded the day’s agenda.

Powerful Choices sends facilitators into the classroom for a four-day period to demonstrate how students’ everyday choices affect the ecosystem. A full day is devoted to each of the following subjects: air, land, water and energy to address issues around air quality, waste reduction, and water and energy use.

To date, Powerful Choices has reached more than 100,000 students throughout PSE’s 11-county service area. In recent years, the program has focused on reaching out to schools in more remote parts of the region with additions in Island, Kitsap, Skagit, Thurston and Whatcom counties.

In the 2007-2008 school year, 15,372 students representing 73 schools participated, an average increase of 22 percent over last year. From September 2007 to June 2008, student application of the curriculum accounted for a savings of over 1 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 100 homes during that same period of time, and 33 million gallons of water, the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools.

To arrange for Powerful Choices to come to your school or for more information about PSE’s energy education programs for kids, parents and teachers, visit PSE.com or call PSE’s Energy Advisors at 1-800-562-1482.

About Powerful Choices for the Environment

Powerful Choices for the Environment offers Puget Sound area schools a comprehensive energy and environmental education curriculum for sixth through eighth grade students. The in-school program is run in cooperation with several local partnering agencies led and staffed by Puget Sound Energy and including support from City of Anacortes, Auburn Public Works, City of Bellevue, City of Black Diamond, City of Bremerton, Covington Water District, City of Enumclaw, City of Issaquah, City of Kent, Kitsap Public Works, City of Olympia, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, City of Redmond, Seattle City Light, Seattle Public Utilities, Skagit County Public Works, and Thurston County Public Works., Environmental education professionals, trained in science education and local resource use, deliver this hands-on, four-day program in the classroom. Through a series of inquiry-based activities that focus on local air quality, waste reduction, and energy and water use, students examine how their actions connect to the quality of their ecosystem and the tradeoffs involved in generating electricity from different sources.

About Puget Sound Energy

Washington state’s oldest and largest energy utility, with a 6,000-square-mile service area stretching across 11 counties, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) serves more than 1 million electric customers and 737,000 natural gas customers. PSE, a subsidiary of Puget Energy (NYSE:PSD), meets the energy needs of its growing customer base primarily in Western Washington through incremental, cost-effective energy conservation, procurement of sustainable energy resources, and far-sighted investment in the energy-delivery infrastructure. PSE employees are dedicated to providing great customer service to deliver energy that is safe, reliable, reasonably priced, and environmentally responsible. For more information, visit www.PSE.com.

Editor’s note: Photographs of the Powerful Choices for the Environment anniversary event are available by contacting Rebekah Anderson at 1-888-831-7250.