SNHU Among Top 10 in EPA Green Power Championship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Gregg Mazzola
Director of Communications
Southern New Hampshire University
603.629.4649
g.mazzola@snhu.edu
Southern New Hampshire University Makes EPA Top 10
Named National Winner in College & University
Green Power Challenge
Manchester, N.H. (May 5, 2008) Southern New Hampshire University is a national winner in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007-2008 College & University Green Power Challenge. This year, the challenge included 40 competing institutions representing 18 different collegiate athletic conferences nationwide. New England was led by SNHU led the Northeast 10 Conference and Colby College led the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
SNHU led the NE-10 by offsetting 100 percent of its energy use by investing in renewable sources such as hydro power and wind.
“Southern New Hampshire University’s green power purchase is part of its renewable energy hedge,” said Roy Morrison, director of SNHU’s Office for Sustainability. “For 15 years we offset our carbon emissions, changed energy from a variable to a fixed annual cost and helped build the renewable resource infrastructure.”
"EPA applauds Colby College and Southern New Hampshire University for their commitment to using green power sources," said Robert Varney, regional administrator of EPA's New England office. "These green power alternatives help to reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and our nation’s dependence on imported oil."
Over the course of the 2007-2008 academic year, the EPA ranked collegiate athletic conferences by the total amount of green power purchased by their member schools. To be eligible, each school had to qualify as an EPA Green Power Partner and each conference had to have a collective green power purchase of at least 10 million kwh.
Green power is produced from eligible renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro. Green power is considered to be cleaner than conventional sources of electricity, and contributes net zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.
The EPA's Green Power Partnership encourages organizations to buy green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with fossil fuel-based electricity use. The partnership includes a diverse set of organizations including Fortune 500 companies, small and medium businesses, government institutions as well as colleges and universities.
Colleges and universities across the country buy green power as a means to reduce the environmental impact of their purchased electricity use. Buying green power can be one of the easiest strategies to reduce an organization’s carbon footprint.
Combined, Colby College and Southern New Hampshire University purchased nearly 30 million kwh of green power this year. EPA estimates that this amount of green power is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions avoided from the electricity used by 3,000 average American homes each year. In total, the colleges and universities represented in this year's challenge are buying more than 960 million kWh of green power annually, the equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions avoided from the electricity used by 100,000 homes each year.
EPA also announced the kickoff of the 2008-2009 Green Power Challenge this week, which is scheduled to conclude in the spring of 2009. The 18 conference champions for the 2007-2008 challenge are listed below, with the Ivy League taking top honors:
Lewis & Clark College
Conference Champion
Conference Affiliation
Champion’s Annual Purchase (Kwl)
Conference’s Annual Total Purchase (Kwl)
University of Pennsylvania
Ivy League
192,727,000
221,583,000
New York University
University Athletic Association
132,000,000
147,000,000
Pennsylvania State University
Big Ten Conference
83,600,000
133,600,000
Oregon State University
Pacific-10 Conference
66,680,400
84,024,400
Colby College
New England Small College Athletic Conference
17,428,000
61,890,000
University of California, Santa Cruz
Association of Division III Independents
57,000,000
59,400,000
Western Washington University
Great Northwest Athletic Conference
40,000,000
42,841,400
University of Utah
Mountain West Conference
36,666,000
40,103,466
Southern Oregon University
Cascade Collegiate Conference
17,622,000
33,828,000
University of Central Oklahoma
Lone Star Conference
26,000,000
26,000,000
Syracuse University
Big East Conference
22,000,000
22,000,000
Southern New Hampshire University
Northeast-10 Conference
12,000,000
16,000,000
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Capital Athletic Conference
15,000,000
15,000,000
University at Buffalo
Mid-American Conference
13,300,000
13,300,000
Oberlin CollegeDuquesne University
North Coast Athletic Conference
10,856,240
12,806,240
Duquesne University
Atlantic 10 Conference
12,500,000
12,500,000
Northwest Conference
4,432,000
10,518,400
Rowan University
New Jersey Athletic Conference
10,433,673
10,433,673
For more information on EPA's College & University Green Power Challenge, please visit: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/initiatives/cu_challenge.htm
About the U.S. EPA’s Green Power Partnership
The EPA’s Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to purchase green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional electricity use. The Partnership currently has hundreds of Partners voluntarily purchasing billions of kilowatt hours of green power annually. Partners include a wide variety of leading organizations, such as Fortune 500 companies, small and medium-sized businesses, local, state and federal governments, trade associations, and colleges and universities. For additional information, please visit http://www.epa.gov/greenpower.
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About Southern New Hampshire University
The university has approximately 1,900 traditional, full-time undergraduate day students and a total enrollment in all divisions of about 9,425. Programs are offered on campus, online and on location at our centers in New Hampshire and Maine. The university offers programs in business, community economic development, culinary arts, teacher education, hospitality management and liberal arts.
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