by Jbs042010 b3 — April 21, 2010—For the fourth year in a row, the University of Pennsylvania has emerged as the top individual school in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009-2010 College and University Green Power Challenge. The university beat out 53 other universities by purchasing more than 192 million kilowatt hours (KWh) of green power, or 46 percent of its power purchases.
Out of 26 ranking athletic conferences nationwide, the Ivy League is the overall college conference champion, with a collective annual green power usage of more than 225 million kWh—the equivalent environmental impact of avoiding the annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of nearly 31,000 vehicles.
The top five Individual Conference Champions are:
- University of Pennsylvania (192,727,000 kWh)—Ivy League (225,471,600 kWh conference total)
- Pennsylvania State University (83,600,000)—Big Ten Conference (159,599,636)
- Carnegie Mellon (86,825,000)—University Athletic Association (92,494,500)
- Oregon State University (66,782,000)—Pacific-10 Conference (81,738,000)
- University of Utah (62,879,992)—Mountain West Conference (68,271,937)
EPA ranks collegiate athletic conferences by the total amount of green power used by their member schools. To be eligible, each school in the conference has to qualify as an EPA Green Power Partner and each conference has to collectively use at least 10 million kWh of green power. The challenge’s total annual green power usage of more than 1 billion kWh is the equivalent of avoiding the CO2 emissions of nearly 160,000 vehicles, notes EPA.
