Dear GRITS Community,

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of GRITS. Way back on Earth Day in 2014 we unveiled the initial version of GRITS as a new solution to help sustainability and energy teams accelerate their institution’s work towards greater energy efficiency and decarbonization goals.

It has been an incredible journey building out the platform’s functionality and growing the community of GRITS users. The guidance, encouragement and support we’ve received from this community have been absolutely essential in making the journey a success, and GRITS definitely wouldn’t exist without all of you. Did you know that nearly 90% of the functionality that users rely on today didn’t yet exist in GRITS 1.0 when we launched the platform a decade ago? The vast majority of new features were added because of input from both current and prospective users and through fun feedback competitions like the GRITS Gold Medal Challenge we ran to coincide with the 2022 Olympic Games.

Below you’ll find a timeline that spotlights a small selection of our milestones over the years.

We want to take a moment to specifically thank many of our original users who are still tracking their work in GRITS 10 years later: Boston University, Colgate University, Dickinson College, Lane Community College, Luther College, Spelman College, the State of Vermont, Thompson Rivers University, University of Michigan, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, Western Michigan University and Williams College.

We’re also grateful for the terrific partner organizations within the GRITS community—APPA, NYSERDA, Second Nature, SIMAP and USDN—that have allowed GRITS to reach a much wider range of institutions.

As we celebrate this milestone, we also want to recognize and deeply thank all of the current and past team members who have worked on GRITS over the past decade. Developing and managing GRITS is a huge effort and we are fortunate to have a world-class team that cares deeply about making an impact in the fight against climate change.

To help celebrate this 10th anniversary year we have many exciting new features planned, so look for announcements about these features in the coming months. And please keep the feedback and suggestions for improvement coming, as we’re always interested in hearing from our current and prospective users. (You can check out feedback that we’ve collected from GRITS users for the 10th anniversary celebration here.)

Thank you so much for being part of the GRITS community. We look forward to continuing to work together to help you reach your institution’s energy, sustainability and decarbonization goals!

Onward!

Mark, Aaron, Arvel, Deb and the whole GRITS Team