by Brianna Crandall — April 25, 2011—For the first time, the Big Ten conference has surpassed the Ivy League conference as the top athletic conference in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s College and University Green Power Challenge, EPA announced April 18.
The Big Ten had an annual green power usage of more than 256 million kWh annually, which is equivalent to the electricity use of more than 21,000 average American homes for one year, with Pennsylvania State University leading the conference. The Ivy League and the University Athletic Association are in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively.
The University of Pennsylvania continues to be the top individual school in the challenge, beating out 68 other universities by purchasing more than 200 million kilowatt hours (KWh) of green power, or 47 percent of its power purchases.
This year’s challenge participation increased to 69 competing institutions, representing 31 different conferences nationwide. EPA says the challenge’s total annual green power usage of more than 1.5 billion kWh has the equivalent environmental impact of avoiding the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the annual electricity use of more than 132,000 homes.
EPA’s CUGPC Web site provides a list of Individual Conference Champions—the colleges and universities recognized for having the largest individual green power purchase among all the schools in their conference; a list of the Ivy League schools that contributed towards Collective Conference Champions designation; and a list of all the Competing Conferences in the 2010-2011 Challenge. The list of the Top 20 individual College and University green power purchasers will be updated April 25, 2011.
