Utah next month will become the first state to institute a mandatory four-day work week for most state employees, following the example of other local governments across the nation that are trying to scale back energy costs:

Gov. Jon Huntsman, a first-term Republican, says he’s making the change to reduce the state’s carbon footprint, increase energy efficiency, improve customer service and provide workers more flexibility.
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The change will apply to about 17,000 employees, roughly 80% of the state workforce, Huntsman says. Public universities, the state court system, prisons and other critical services will be exempt. Residents still will have sufficient access to state offices, many staying open from 7 a.m.- 6 p.m., and more than 800 state services are available online, he says.

The story doesn’t say how many hours employees would have to work on each of those four days to make up for the lost fifth day, but another USA Today story says employees in other places that have switched to four-day weeks generally work four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days. For the most part, the changes are being driven by rising gas prices — employees have requested shorter workweeks to cut back on driving costs.

Utah’s goal is to cut back energy use by 20 percent by 2015.

Hawaii’s goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels by 2020. It will be interesting to see if any work week changes will be considered here, where the average price of gas today is $4.34, compared to Utah, where the average price is $4.10 today. I’m guessing that the average commute for someone in Hawaii compared to someone in Utah may be shorter, but seeing how traffic is becoming increasingly congested here, well, I’m not sure.

Our ears perked up over at the Advertiser at reports of some rural schools on the mainland switching to four-day school weeks because of high energy costs, both for the school and students, who may have to commute from far away. After a few calls, however, I couldn’t find any schools here, including the colleges and universities, that were considering switching to a four-day school week.

Hawaii’s seven community colleges statewide “are in geographic regions that are supposedly in people’s neighborhoods,” Susan Lee, marketing director for the UH community college system, told me.

The community college system also offers education through outreach centers or extension programs in rural or less-served areas, Lee said. “I think we just try to reach out to the students in that sense,” she added.

Just something to think about as many of us enjoy this four-day week. I guess we’ll see what happens when gas hits $5 a gallon …

On Monday, I read this article in the NYT about a “sustainability house” at Oberlin College with interest.

The house, called SEED (Student Experiment in Ecological Design) represents a growing effort on college campuses — including the University of Hawaii — to consume less energy, reduce carbon emissions and recycle.

Although it seems they’re still trying to nail down exactly what it means to have a “sustainable house,” the eight housemates in the Oberlin house mastered such skills as worm composting, staying warm with the thermostat set at 60 degrees (a feat — Ohio winters can be COLD), living without TV, and taking shorter showers by sticking a photo of Sen. John Edwards on the ceiling above the showerhead.

They even consolidated all their food into one fridge (there are two kitchens) and unplugged all the appliances in one kitchen.

My college held a contest with similar goals. The different houses competed to see who could lower their electricity bill the most from the previous year’s. The month-long competition was called “Do It In The Dark.”

Some students went to great lengths to compete, pushing each other to turn off lights whenever they left a room, unplug lap tops and take quick showers. Unfortunately, our house, which had eight girls, did not win the contest. But the campus did save $10,000 in electricity bills during spring 2006, my senior year.

(AND we earned a nod from Thomas Friedman.)

The University of Hawaii at Manoa is working on its own sustainable building project, Sustainable Saunders, a student and faculty-led effort to make 7-story Saunders Hall a model for sustainability on the UH campus (see photo). UH is the second-largest consumer of electricity on Oahu, after military services, and according to the Sustainable Saunders web site, about $1.5 million in student tuition goes to pay the university’s electricity bill each month.

“Sustainability” has become a buzz-word that’s often easy to brush off as a vague and unreachable idea. But it has to be a very real idea in Hawai‘i, which remains the most oil-dependent state in the nation. And for young people, who may see many of the natural resources we now take for granted disappear within our lifetimes, caring about sustainability is more than just a trend — it’s caring about the quality of our lives, our future.

So go ahead, no shame: Tell your friends to do it in the dark.

Photo: Sustainable Saunders Earth Day 2008 on Flickr.