by Brianna Crandall — February 9, 2011—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its quarterly list February 1 of the top 50 partner organizations using the most “green” power generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydropower.
EPA’s Green Power Partnership’s largest single purchaser of green power, Intel Corporation, increased its commitment by nearly doubling its annual green power usage to more than 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). This is the largest green power purchase to date in the partnership, notes EPA.
Kohl’s, second on the national top 50 list, joined Intel as the only two partners using more than 1 billion kWh of green power. Kohl’s increased its green power purchase to more than 1.4 billion kWh of green power annually. Staples more than doubled its green power commitment, and Sony Corporation of America nearly doubled its green power purchase.
Best Buy; Suffolk County, NY; and Drexel University are all making first-time appearances on the national top 50 list. Collectively, these top 50 partner organizations are using more than 13.5 billion kWh of green power annually, says EPA.
The top ten companies on the Top 50 list are:
- Intel Corporation (2,502,052,000 kWh annual green power usage; 88% of total electricity use)
- Kohl’s Department Stores (1,418,065,000; 100%)
- Whole Foods Market (817,657,623; 100%)
- Starbucks (573,432,000; 55%)
- Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (500,000,000; 50%)
- City of Houston, TX (438,000,000; 34%)
- Johnson & Johnson (416,510,688; 39%)
- Staples (341,524,408; 52%)
- City of Dallas, TX (302,880,000; 40%)
- HSBC North America (300,000,000; 112%)
- Kohl’s Department Stores (1,418,065,000; 100%)
EPA updated all of its Top Partner Rankings on February 1 for the quarter ending January 5. One of the notable changes is that Drexel University also made its first appearance on the Top 20 College & University list, moving immediately into third place.
The lists updated February 1 include: Fortune 500, 100% Green Power Purchasers, Top 20 College & University, Top 10 Federal Government, Top 20 Local Government, Top 20 Retail, Top 20 On-site Generation, Top 20 Printers and Top 20 K-12 Schools.
EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with more than 1,300 partner organizations to voluntarily purchase green power to reduce the environmental impacts of conventional electricity use. Overall, partners are using more than 19.2 billion kWh of green power annually, equivalent to avoiding the CO2 emissions from the electricity use of nearly 1.7 million average American homes.
