Companies That Buy Green Power
(Page 2 of 3)
Sept. 10, 2008
By Aly Van Dyke
One REC is equivalent to 1 megawatt hour of green power. When an organization purchases an REC, 1 megawatt hour of energy is added to a utility’s grid system from a renewable resource. RECs are, therefore, a way for organizations to compensate for or offset energy that comes from more conventional resources, such as coal.
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Top Buyers of Green Power
Four times a year, the EPA releases an updated list of the top green power partners. Here’s some information about the top five companies from the July 2008 report.
Intel purchased 1.3 billion kWh in RECs January 2008, which compensates for 47 percent of the company’s nationwide electricity use. But Intel’s motivation for this was more than just offsetting a portion of its carbon footprint.
“We hoped to stimulate the market for renewable energy and really start to encourage other companies to take notice and consider making similar changes,” says Christine Dotts, Intel’s environment media relations manager.
Intel’s REC purchases go toward biomass, geothermal, solar and wind energy, and are part of a larger sustainability effort.
PepsiCo purchased 1.1 billion kWh of green power in 2007 — equivalent to 100 percent of its annual electricity use and enough to power 90,000 American homes annually. Since joining Green Power Partnership in 2007, Pepsi has been at or near the top of the EPA’s quarterly list and was named Green Power Partner of the Year in 2007 by the EPA. Beyond buying green power, Pepsi has also implemented numerous policies to conserve and reuse resources used at plant sites and regularly educates personnel on environmental issues — which you can read about in its annual sustainability report.
Having already purchased 9 million kWh this year, the U.S. Air Force has invested in a number of biogas, biomass, geothermal, solar and wind energy providers. The REC purchases account for 9 percent of the Air Force’s total annual electricity usage.
