About Teton Area 10×10

Background:

During the past several years, different segments of the Jackson Hole community have become interested in the community’s consumption of resources such as energy, trash, fuel, and the like. For some, this interest stems from a concern about global warming; for others, it’s a function of wanting to save money; for still others, it’s a combination of these and other factors. Regardless of their motivation, though, since 2003, a number of community businesses and non-profits have taken steps to use resources more efficiently, and to teach and encourage others to do the same. In particular, during 2006 and 2007, several key events occurred regarding how the community thinks about and uses its resources:

  • The Town of Jackson government signed the Mayor’s Climate Change Agreement, and the Teton County government has made a similar commitment.
  • The Town of Jackson and Teton County government formed the Energy Efficiency Advisory Board to advise them on steps they could take to reduce the resources used by their own organizations, as well as other community-wide steps they could consider.
  • Nearly three dozen Jackson Hole area businesses, non-profits, and government agencies participated in “Jackson’s Green Actions I,” a gathering of organizations actively taking steps to use resources more efficiently.
  • The RRR Business Leaders program (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) enrolled its 50th participating business, each of which is committed to reducing its resource use.
  • Lower Valley Energy started selling Green Power, and formalized a policy which holds that the least expensive kilowatt hour they can buy is the one they do not use (i.e. committing the company to encourage conservation).
  • Pursue Balance, a new non-profit, has started selling “Green Tags” or carbon offset credits to Teton County residents.
  • The Teton Sustainability Project’s annual Eco-fairs have hosted a number of prominent speakers addressing global warming and the need for resource conservation.
  • The Sustaining Jackson Hole Resource Use group held a Resource Use mini-Summit, the focus of which was how the Jackson Hole community might systematically work toward reducing energy use and the amount of trash shipped out of Teton County.
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Combined, these and other efforts have developed a great deal of momentum going into 2008, and the Teton Area 10×10 initiative was a logical next step.

Ideal/Mission:

The Teton Area 10×10 will lead and support efforts resulting in increasingly efficient resource use in the Tetons region every year.

Goals:

  1. Every year, more people and organizations in the Tetons region will commit to using resources more efficiently.
  2. Every year, participants will maintain or improve past gains and expand their efforts to use resource more efficiently.
  3. Every year, visitors to the Tetons region will learn how to conserve resources, and how their efforts will help sustain the region’s essential qualities.

Objective:

The Teton Area 10×10 Initiative will lead and support resource- use efficiency efforts, produce and provide educational materials, and take other steps to make it easier and more acceptable for Tetons-area residents, visitors, businesses, non-profits, and governmental agencies to use resources in an increasingly efficient fashion.

Strategy:

The Teton Area 10×10 will initially ask those already actively conserving resources to commit to reducing their energy use by a fixed amount by a fixed date (e.g. 10 percent of households will commit to reducing their energy use by at least 10% by 2010). The purpose of the Initiative efforts will be to identify and have participants work toward unambiguous goals and ideals. Each participant will be part of an ever-expanding participant pool that is continuously improving how efficiently they are using resources.

Over time, the Initiative will expand its efforts in two ways:

  1. Increase the number of participants committed to its efforts.
  2. Outreach to current participants to maintain gains to date and improve their resource- use efficiently.

Evaluation:

The Teton Area 10×10 will carefully evaluate efforts and use evaluation methods to build on successes and address problems. The only failed effort in the Initiative will be one from which it does not learn.

Click here to learn more about our Steering Committee.