This national education association provides energy curriculum and training workshops for teachers across the country. Teachers use the curriculum to teach the connection between content, energy conservation, and environmental impacts. Students who implement a community energy education project are recognized at NEED’s annual youth awards program held in Washington, DC.

NEED is a nonprofit education association, committed to promoting an energy conscious and educated society by creating effective networks of students, educators, business, government, and community leaders to design and deliver objective, multi-sided energy education programs.

Like NAAEE, NEED strives to teach people how to think, not what to think. NEED fills a critical niche in educating K-12 market about energy choices and the impact these choices have on the environment. For over 25 years ,NEED has delivered an energy curriculum to K-12 teachers across the U.S.  NEED has active programs in 42 states and U.S. territories. Its comprehensive, unbiased curriculum is divided into steps that take the student from learning energy basics to investigating energy alternatives and finally to conducting community education.

Here are a few examples documented in NEED’s annual report:

CAPE COD  -- Twenty-one schools on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard will have their own 2.0 kW Photovoltaic electrical systems installed through the efforts of the Cape Light Compact and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative . . . these systems will be great tools for education efforts in renewable energy. In the fall, each school with a PV installation will receive a NEED Schools Going Solar kit for use in the classroom to enhance the PV lessons.

INDIANA: Five NEED Energy Workshops were held for teachers, with a special emphasis on energy management at home and at school. Energy conservation was also the focus of a two-day conference for school building operators, providing them with information and training to implement energy saving practices into their schools—to save energy and money for their schools and districts.

KENTUCKY: NEED promoted energy efficiency at the residential level in partnership with Duke Energy. NEED curriculum and a companion kit provided 500 families with energy efficient tools that will help them lower their energy consumption. Students at one elementary school used this as a platform to create a DVD on energy efficiency that they gave to every fourth and fifth grade family in the school. This project earned them the 2006 Earth Day Award from the Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission.

As an Energy Star partner, NEED published a Change A Light Guide for teachers and communities, showing them how to improve the environment by changing one light bulb at a time. Thousands of people have taken the Change A Light pledge thanks to the mobilization of NEED teachers and students, thereby reducing carbon emissions into the environment. Energy and the environment are intricately intertwined. NEED understands that energy issues, as with environmental issues, there are no easy answers. Education is necessary for students and adults to understand the impacts their energy choices have on the environment, the economy and our lifestyles.