by Shane Henson — September 30, 2011—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the communities of Washington, DC and Brookeville, Maryland as winners of the first Green Power Community Challenge. The year-long challenge encouraged communities across the nation to voluntarily increase their use of green power generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas, and low-impact hydropower.
Washington, DC surpassed all other challenge participants to win the competition title for the most amount of green power used annually. District of Columbia businesses, residents, and the District Government are collectively using more than 772 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, enough to meet eight percent of the community’s total electricity use.
Brookeville, Maryland is the challenge winner for the highest green power percentage of total electricity use. Forty-five percent of Brookeville’s local government, residential, and business electricity usage comes from green power sources.
The EPA launched the challenge in September 2010 with a goal for its participating communities, across 14 states and the District of Columbia, to reach a green power usage of 1.8 billion kWh annually. Given the huge amount of energy buildings require, facilities managers in Washington, DC and Brookville were likely among the first persons to notice the positive impact the challenge had in reducing energy costs through the use of renewable resources.
