Duke in EPA's Top Ten List of Higher Education Green Power Purchasers
5th Largest Wind Power Purchaser
Monday, February 13th, 2006
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its first nationwide Top 10 List highlighting the largest college and university purchasers of renewable energy by members of the Green Power Partnership. The list reflects renewable energy purchases made through January 18, 2006.
Duke comes in at number five, following UPenn, Western Washington, Utah, and Syracuse universities. One thing common to all the schools in the list is that their purchases of renewable energy have been driven largely by student initiative.
Duke began purchasing wind power in 2003 through the Duke Green Power Challenge, which was organized by Environmental Alliance, an undergraduate student group. In 2004, students in the Pratt School of Engineering lobbied to have their new "green" building, the Fitzpatrick Center, wind powered. Students in the Nicholas School of the Environment quickly added to that by convincing the School to purchase wind power for all of its operations, including the Beaufort Marine Lab.
In total, over 10% of Duke's annual electricity use is matched with Renewable Energy Certificates from wind farms.
And the portion that is wind powered is about to grow even more. Students in the Fuqua School of Business are hard at work putting together the business case for their school to go wind powered. The word on the street is that Fuqua could be wind powered as soon as the new fiscal year.
Because Duke buys wind power from Sterling Planet through a Master Contract, it is easy for Duke schools and departments to purchase wind power individually, even to offset the energy used in special events!
Duke is a member of the EPA's Green Power Partnership, which is a voluntary program that seeks to increase the use of renewable energy among leading U.S. organizations. Partners in the program purchase green power for a portion of their electricity needs in return for EPA technical assistance and recognition. EPA's Green Power Partnership currently has more than 600 Partners, including Fortune 500 companies, states, federal agencies, trade associations and universities.
The actions of the Top 10 College and University Green Power Partners help to drive the development of new renewable energy sources of electricity generation. Combined, the purchases made by these college and university Partners amount to 216,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of green power annually. This is enough renewable energy to power approximately 20,000 homes a year or it is equivalent to removing the emissions of 26,000 cars from the road each year.
