EPA stages “Biggest Loser” for commercial buildings

The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program has gone Hollywood.

In a bid to capture some reality TV magic for the energy efficiency movement (think The Biggest Loser), the agency has concocted a competition that will pit 14 commercial buildings against each other to see which one can cut energy waste the most energy between September 2009 and August of this year. The winner will be announced Oct. 26. You can follow the action, even sign up for the buildings’ teams’ Twitter feeds, at the National Building Competition web site. Better yet, go to the site and see what you can do in your own building.

Two hundred buildings–or maybe their owners–applied for the competition, which requires building operators to deploy a suite of Energy Star tools to track and manage energy use. The selected contestants range from a New York skyscraper to a rural Colorado school to a Minnesota shopping mall. None is from the Northwest, perhaps because we already have cool things like BOMA’s Kilowatt Crackdown. Who knows?

Anyway, here’s Bob Harper from the real reality show to explain the details, complete with references to the “energy waste line.” Really.

And here’s a catchy look at all the contestants.

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