Eighteen Individual Colleges and Universities Recognized as Top Green Power Purchasers in their Conference - Ivy League Retains Distinction as Overall Champion Conference

Release date: 04/28/2008

Contact Information: Dave Ryan, (202) 564-4355 / ryan.dave@epa.gov

(Washington, D.C. - April 28, 2008) For the second year in a row, the Ivy League wins the crown as the overall champion conference in EPA's 2007-2008 College & University Green Power Challenge. Led by the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League's cumulative annual purchase of more than 220 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) has the equivalent environmental impact of avoiding the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of nearly 32,000 vehicles. This year's challenge included 40 competing institutions representing 18 different conferences nationwide.

"EPA applauds this year's College & University Green Power Conference Champions for their leadership in green power purchasing," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. "By switching to green power resources these schools are proving that doing what's good for the environment is also good for education."

Since the spring of 2007, EPA has ranked collegiate athletic conferences by the total amount of green power bought by their member schools. To be eligible, each school in the conference had to qualify as an EPA Green Power Partner and each conference had to collectively purchase at least 10 million kWh of green power. For added information on how your school can qualify as an EPA Green Power Partner, visit: epa.gov/greenpower/join/steps.htm

Green power is a subset of renewable energy and represents those resources and technologies that generate electricity with the highest environmental benefit. Green power is produced from eligible resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro. Green power has a superior environmental profile to traditional power generation, generating electricity with no net increase of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

EPA's Green Power Partnership encourages organizations to buy green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with traditional fossil fuel-based electricity use. The partnership includes a diverse set of organizations including Fortune 500 companies, small and medium businesses, government institutions as well as a growing number of colleges and universities.

In addition to the Ivy League, EPA's Green Power Partnership also recognized the leading green power purchases of 17 other schools as individual conference champions. In total, the colleges and universities represented in this year's challenge are buying more than 960 million kWh of green power annually. EPA estimates that this amount of green power is equal to the electricity needed to power nearly 97,000 average American homes each year.

EPA also announced the kickoff of the 2008-2009 Green Power Challenge this week, which is scheduled to conclude in the spring of 2009.

The 18 individual conference champions for the 2007-2008 challenge are listed below, with the Ivy League taking top conference honors:

Conference Champion State Conference Affiliation Champion's Conference's
Purchase Total Purchase

• Univ. of Pennsylvania Pa. Ivy League 192,727,000 221,583,000
• New York University N.Y. University Athletic Assoc. 132,000,000 147,000,000
• Pennsylvania State Univ. Pa. Big Ten Conference 83,600,000 133,600,000
• Oregon State University Ore. Pacific-10 Conference 66,680,400 84,024,400
• Colby College Maine New England Small Coll. Athl. 17,428,000 61,890,000
• Univ. of Calif., Santa Cruz Calif. Assoc. of Division III Indep. 57,000,000 59,400,000
• Western Washington Univ. Wash. Great Northwest Athletic Conf. 40,000,000 42,841,400
• University of Utah Utah Mountain West Conf. 36,666,000 40,103,466
• Southern Oregon Univ. Ore. Cascade Collegiate Conf. 17,622,000 33,828,000
• University. of Central Okla. Okla. Lone Star Conference 26,000,000 26,000,000
• Syracuse University N.Y. Big East Conference 22,000,000 22,000,000
• Southern N.H. Univ. N.H. Northeast-10 Conference 12,000,000 16,000,000
• St. Mary's College of Md. Md. Capital Athletic Conference 15,000,000 15,000,000
• University at Buffalo N.Y. Mid-American Conference 13,300,000 13,300,000
• Oberlin College Ohio North Coast Athletic Conf. 10,856,240 12,806,240
• Duquesne University Pa. Atlantic 10 Conference 12,500,000 12,500,000
• Lewis & Clark College Ore. Northwest Conference 4,432,000 10,518,400
• Rowan University N.J. New Jersey Athletic Conf. 10,433,673 10,433,673