The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently listed Penn State as one of its Top 10 College and University Green Power Partners.
The list of schools was compiled in January and released this month as a quarterly evaluation. Penn State ranked third behind No. 1 green power user New York University and the University of Pennsylvania in second place.
Green power is a form of clean energy that can be generated by solar, wind, geothermal, low impact hydro and biomass, said EPA program manager Blaine Collison.
"All of the schools on our list have completed green power purchases, and they are helping to drive the development of new renewable energy sources," Collison said. "Penn State has made a significant commitment to green power which has only increased over time, and if all the rest of the schools in the Big Ten were doing this, it would be an amazing show of environmental leadership and pollution prevention."
Penn State has made the list in the past, most recently in July 2006 as No. 10 with 4 percent of the university's total energy being derived from green power. Because of Penn State's ongoing conservation efforts, the university has increased its green power usage to 20 percent of total energy, said university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz.
"We have made vast improvements over the past few years," Mountz said. "We've even been taking into consideration new construction, and the last few buildings we've built have all conformed to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) specifications."
According to the EPA's Web site, Penn State's annual purchase of 83,600,000 kilowatt-hours of green power usage comes from biomass, small hydro and wind energy resources.
Eco-Action president Brittany Harris said the increase in green power energy at Penn State has been brought about by a new energy plan introduced last semester.
"When talk of a new energy plan began last semester, Eco-Action originally asked for 10 percent of total energy use to be green power, and we are actually at 20 percent, so this is great news," Harris said. "We are definitely among the top universities for green energy use right now, and especially for universities this size."
While Harris is pleased with Penn State's improvements, she said Eco-Action has already begun to take the next step and is ready to introduce the President's Climate Pledge.
"The President's Climate Pledge is an agreement from the university that they will eventually have a climate neutral campus, which means any green house gases emitted will be offset by green energy use," Harris said.
Penn State has already begun to take the initial steps required for the pledge by initiating its new energy plan this year, Harris said.
"We're on the right track. We just have to deal with issues on campus such as the fact that 30 percent of our energy use comes from student use in the dorms," Harris said. "There is no time restriction on the pledge, so the university has an opportunity to come up with a long-term plan to become carbon neutral."
While the next Green Power Partners update will not be released until mid April, Collison said the EPA has also created another list called the College and University Green Power Challenge, which is organized by athletic conference and allows people to make peer-to-peer comparisons of green power usage, Collision said.
He added that while Penn State is number three in the Green Power Partners, it is number one in the Green Power Challenge for the Big Ten.
"Penn State is one of two Big Ten schools which uses Green Power as part of their daily energy use, the other school being Northwestern Univeristy," Collison said. "If Penn State and Northwestern can and are using green power every day, then it makes you wonder why Michigan, Ohio State and all the other schools aren't helping in this effort."
