In honor of Earth Day, Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton rolled out more of her Green Economy Agenda this past week. On Monday, she unveiled a website that helps people figure out how to switch their household to renewable energy. On Thursday, she announced an efficiency challenge for public schools to a group of attentive 4th and 5th graders at Shorewood Hills Elementary School in Madison.

Both are aimed at helping Wisconsin “shrink its footprint.”

In “an era of scant resources” in the public school system, Lawton says the Energy Star School Challenge pools resources for districts so that at least 100 schools can become at least 10% more efficient in one year.

The Madison Metropolitan School District has already saved $4 million since it became an Energy Star partner nine years ago, and its utility bills are now 40 percent less than they would have been if schools hadn’t increased efficiency, according to Art Rainwater, district superintendent.

In the past three years, Shorewood Hills Elementary became an Energy Star School by replacing boilers, lighting and roofing, as well as installing motion sensors on the ventilation system and switching to an automatic temperature control.

Lawton said that many schools in Wisconsin are working with tight budgets and don’t have the resources to figure out from scratch how to make their operations more energy efficient. The Energy Star School Challenge partners with the Environmental Protection Agency to provide start-up tools, trainings and advice.

“We just want to put it all into one place so there’s no excuse not to do it,” she said. Because it’s possible to pay for improvements out of money saved and energy costs avoided, there’s not necessarily a risk for losing money: “If you don’t save money, (the company) sends you a check.”

The kids in attendance, members of the student council, had a lot of questions for Lawton and “the dudes in suits,” as one boy characterized her entourage.

One kid fired a series of especially hard-hitting questions.

“Would it be possible to build a school on a waterfront so it could make its own hydroelectric power?” – “How do you plan to get rid of all those light bulbs if they contain mercury?” – “We should also try to figure out how energy efficient we ARE, to figure out how much we have to improve. Are we top of the chart, middle of the chart or bottom of the chart?”

As it turns out, we’re on the rock bottom of the chart when it comes to energy efficiency research spending. The amount of money the federal government invests per year in solar power research equals what we spend in Iraq in nine hours, according to Lawton. Maybe if we had put more money into solar power research, we wouldn’t be at war in Iraq fighting over oil in the first place, she added.