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April 27, 2015 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Allegheny College as a 2014-2015 Individual Conference Champion of the College & University Green Power Challenge for using more green power than any other school in the North Coast Athletic Conference.

Since April 2006, EPA’s Green Power Partnership has tracked and recognized the collegiate athletic conferences with the highest combined green power use in the nation. The Individual Conference Champion Award recognizes the school that has the largest individual use of green power within a qualifying conference. Allegheny has taken top honors for the past four years.

Allegheny College beat its conference rivals by using more than 15 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power, representing 100 percent of the school’s annual electricity usage. Allegheny College is buying renewable energy certificates (RECs) from Constellation NewEnergy. In addition, Allegheny College is generating green power from an on-site renewable energy system using solar resources. This demonstrates a proactive choice to switch away from traditional sources of electricity generation and support cleaner renewable energy alternatives. Allegheny’s commitment to on-campus renewables and the purchase of RECs also halves the campus carbon footprint and advances progress toward the college’s 2020 climate neutrality goal.

According to the U.S. EPA, Allegheny College’s green power use of more than 15 million kWh is equivalent to the electricity use of more than 1,000 average American homes annually.

Thirty-nine collegiate conferences and 90 schools competed in the 2014-2015 challenge, collectively using nearly 2.4 billion kWh of green power. EPA will extend the College & University Green Power Challenge for a 10th year, to conclude in spring of 2016. EPA’s Green Power Challenge is open to all U.S. colleges, universities and conferences. In order to qualify, a collegiate athletic conference must include at least one school that qualifies as a Green Power Partner, and the conference must collectively use at least 10 million kWh of green power.

Green power is zero-emissions electricity that is generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, eligible biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro. Using green power helps accelerate the development of new renewable energy capacity nationwide and helps users reduce their carbon footprints.