Western students might remember getting report cards to show their progress in grade school. Now, Western gets one too, to show its sustainability progress.

Officials released Western’s second sustainability report Thursday, and it catalogs campus efforts to make Western more sustainable, said Sustainability Coordinator Christian Ryan-Downing, who prepared the report.

“It lets everybody know what’s going on,” she said. “It’s hard to keep up with everything, and this brings it all together in one place.”

The report isn’t just for people on campus or the community, Ryan-Downing said. People from all over the region and nation see Western as an emerging leader in sustainability.

Some of the most significant achievements this year are energy reduction and an increase in academic offerings and awareness related to sustainability, Ryan-Downing said.

Western’s reduction in energy use in the past fiscal year is remarkable, she said. During that time, energy use on campus was reduced by four million kilowatt-hours.

A hard shutdown in December 2008 accounts for one-fourth of that energy reduction, Facilities Operation Manager Dale Dyer said. Officials plan to have the shutdown again this year.

The shutdown closed campus a week early for winter break and turned off electricity during that time to balance a shortfall in Western’s energy budget.

The shutdown saved Western $128,000, Ryan-Downing said.

Another step officials took to reduce energy use was decreasing room temperatures during the heating season and increasing temperatures during the cooling season, Dyer said.

It’s hard to know if people have been making conscious efforts to conserve energy, he said.

Officials have been working to make faculty, staff and students mindful of their energy use, he said.

“It would be great if people would accept personal responsibility for their energy consumption,” Dyer said. “We rely on that.”

Ryan-Downing said she thinks the energy reduction was a result of efforts made by both officials and individuals.

“You can’t save that much energy without a combination of efforts,” she said.

The energy reduction is hard to display graphically, because it took place over several months, and the scale of the graph makes it seem like only a little drop, Ryan-Downing said.

“But that little bit of a drop is at the same time that building space and population was increasing on campus,” she said.

There’s also been progress made in the academic side of sustainability on campus, with many departments offering classes related to sustainability, Ryan-Downing said.

Sustainability courses have become a focus at colleges across the nation and are increasingly seen as recruiting factors, according to the sustainability report.

Western has integrated courses on sustainable issues into the curriculum of many departments, including agriculture, architecture, biology, English, geography, management and sociology, according to the report.

The report also lists sustainable efforts made in regards to landscaping, recycling, lab printing, housing, parking and dining.

The report is available on the sustainability Web site along with a limited number of printed copies, and Ryan-Downing hopes people will take time to look through it, she said.