Today, St. Mary’s College of Maryland announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized it as an Individual Conference Champion of the 2015-16 College and University
Green Power Challenge for using more green power than any other school in the Capital Athletic Conference.
Since April 2006, EPA’s Green Power Partnership has tracked and recognized the collegiate athletic conferences with the highest combined green power use within the program. The Individual Conference Champion Award recognizes the school that uses the most green power in a qualifying conference.
St. Mary’s College beat its conference rivals by using more than 17 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power, representing 90 percent of the school’s annual electricity usage. The College is procuring renewable energy certificates (RECs) from 3Degrees, and is generating green power from an on-site renewable energy system using solar resources. This demonstrates a proactive choice to switch away from traditional sources of electricity generation and support cleaner renewable energy alternatives. According to the U.S. EPA, St. Mary’s College’s green power use of more than 17 million kWh is equivalent to the electricity use of nearly 1,600 average American homes annually.
The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to use green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with electricity use. The Partnership currently has nearly 1,400 Partner organizations voluntarily using billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Partners include a wide variety of leading organizations such as Fortune 500® companies, small and medium sized businesses, local, state, and federal governments, and colleges and universities.
What is green power? Green power is zero-emissions electricity that is generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, eligible biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro. Using green power helps accelerate the development of new renewable energy capacity nationwide and helps users reduce their carbon footprints.
For more information about EPA’s College and University Green Power Challenge, visit the Challenge website at https://www.epa.gov/greenpower/college-and-university-challenge.