Our History
In the early 1980s, Energy Education’s Founder and CEO Dr. Bill Spears was elected to the school board in Wichita Falls, Texas, about 120 miles northwest of Dallas. Bill’s desire to serve the Wichita Falls community and the youth attending local public schools, combined with his life-long passion for education, resulted in Bill’s service on the School Board.
During his service as a school board member, he and his colleagues, much like any school board, consistently strived to achieve academic excellence while challenged with an always-tightening budget. Even though budget deliberations were challenging, Bill always focused on placing as much money as possible directly into the classroom.
Bill’s desire to increase classroom resources by decreasing the amount spent on other budget line items focused his attention on potential operational savings. Because Wichita Falls was significantly expanding its building footprints throughout the District, prospects for decreasing operation expenditures were bleak. However, Bill Spears saw an opportunity to decrease at least one large budget expenditure — energy and utility expenses. 
Over the course of the next few years, Bill continued to serve on the school board while working to design a utility savings program. Soon it was clear to Bill that utility costs could be significantly decreased without sacrificing class room comfort and without buying thousands of dollars of new utility equipment. Bill presented his concept and program to his school board colleagues and they agreed to implement his money-saving effort, which focused exclusively on behavior modification.
Several years later, the Wichita Falls School District had decreased utility spending and was using the savings to further its many classroom educational initiatives. Bill Spears had created and implemented a proven energy savings program right in his hometown for the school district he served.
Not long after his initial success, both the U.S. Department of Energy and the State of Texas presented the district and Bill Spears with a prestigious Energy Innovation Award (1986) for his energy conservation success.
Since 1986, Bill Spears’ desire to put as many dollars into the classroom as possible by reducing utility costs has resulted in more than $1.5 billion in savings for more than 900 clients across the nation. From his determined days as a school board member, Bill Spears and his company, EEI, are recognized today as a national leader in energy conservation through behavioral change.