WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Green Power Leadership Award Winners for 2023, honoring five leading U.S. organizations in EPA’s Green Power Partnership: Elevance Health, Hormel Foods, Palo Alto Networks, The Home Depot, and Truckee Meadows Community College. These winners span a range of different types of organizations who choose renewable energy and exemplify Partnership’s market leadership and principles of driving product innovation, enabling green power access, and accelerating the transition to a pollution-free electricity sector.
“I applaud the 2023 Green Power Leadership Award winners for pushing the envelope on new strategies to expand the use of renewable energy,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Use of clean, renewable energy is essential to meet America’s climate goals, and this year’s winners are innovating – across their core businesses, their supply chains and their communities – to deliver compelling new strategies that will accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy.”
For more than 20 years, the Green Power Leadership Awards have recognized hundreds of organizations for their exceptional achievements and leadership in the green power marketplace. This year's Green Power Leadership Award recipients are using more than 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, enough to power approximately 145,000 average American homes for a year. The 2023 Award winners also go above and beyond simply choosing green power and demonstrate leadership through strategies such as incentivizing employees to access green power at home, engaging with community solar, and encouraging supply chain partners to reduce emissions.
EPA’s Green Power Partners drive demand for investment in renewable energy in the U.S. green power market and influence suppliers to switch to green power, accelerating development of these resources and leading the way to a clean energy future. Green power is electricity generated from renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, eligible biomass, and low-impact hydro. These high-quality renewable sources produce green power with little to zero air emissions, or impact on the environment or human health.
The EPA Green Power Leadership Award winners for 2023 are:
Elevance Health, Inc. (Indianapolis, IN), an American health insurance company, is being recognized for its green power use and sector leadership. Elevance Health has used 100% green power since 2021 with approximately equal parts sourced through a 15-year solar financial power purchase agreement (PPA) of nearly 80 million kWh as well as 90 million kWh from retail renewable energy sources. The company prioritizes engaging with strategic value chain partners on setting scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and is actively engaged in community partnerships focused on advancing health equity, including through affordable solar engagement.
Hormel Foods Corporation (Austin, MN), a global food company, is being recognized for its green power usage, community solar development, and employee renewable energy engagement. Over the past year, Hormel Foods has increased its U.S. domestic green power use from less than 10% to 100% through a financial PPA that generates over 936 million kilowatt hours of green power annually. Additionally, Hormel Foods supports community solar in rural areas, sponsoring a community solar garden in Wichita, Kansas and serving as an anchor-tenant in a community solar project in Montevideo, Minnesota which Hormel employees can subscribe to. Hormel also engages employees with its “Sustainability Best of The Best” internal competition, inspiring global teams to integrate green power into their processes.
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA), a multinational cybersecurity company, is being recognized in part for its innovation in green power usage. Palo Alto Networks recently adopted their science-based greenhouse reduction targets as internal key performance indicators (KPIs). Establishment of these targets as KPIs ties renewable energy use and progress toward emissions reduction targets to the company’s line of credit from investors and their access to capital. This year, Palo Alto Networks supported a pilot green tariff program by purchased over 15 million kWh as one of the first companies to participate in Silicon Valley Power’s Large Company Renewable Energy Program. The company also engages employees through its FLEXBenefits incentive program to support and increase access to renewable electricity purchasing and clean technologies for all employees.
The Home Depot, Inc. (Atlanta, GA), a multinational home improvement retailer, is being recognized for the company’s green power usage, enabling renewable energy project development, and installation of electricity storage technologies and projects at retail locations. The Home Depot purchases more than 400 million kWh of wind and solar power annually. Since 2022, the company has purchased green power directly from several new projects including a 50MW wind project in Nebraska and two solar projects in Texas totaling 115MW. The Home Depot also demonstrated dedication to grid improvements by installing 55 standalone battery storage projects in five different states with a total capacity of over 12 MW to bolster grid and facility resiliency and drive down peak demand costs. In 2022, the company provided retail access to solar panels for more than 7,000 homes and recorded sales of over 4,000 EV chargers.
Truckee Meadows Community College
Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC), a community college in Reno, Nevada, is being recognized for their green power usage and educational programs. Since 2019, TMCC has matched 100% of its electricity load service with more than 7.8 million kWh of solar power purchased through its utility’s Nevada GreenEnergy Rider Tariff. TMCC also installed four on-site solar arrays and two wind turbines, which are used as an educational tool to provide hands-on training in the college’s Applied Technologies architecture and renewable energy programs. In 2022-23, TMCC declared a college-wide theme: “Year of Sustainability,” encouraging sustainable concepts to be used in wider areas of in-classroom education and hosted a series of events educating students about their commitment to green power.
Background
The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that helps increase green power use among U.S. organizations. The goal of the Partnership is to advance the American market for green power development as a way to reduce air pollution and other environmental impacts associated with electricity use. In 2021, the Partnership had more than 700 Partners voluntarily using more than 85 billion 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; and colleges and universities. For additional information, please visit EPA's Green Power Partnership webpage.
The Green Power Leadership Awards are announced at the Renewable Energy Markets Conference, to which EPA is an Organizing Sponsor. Learn more about EPA 2023 Green Power Leadership Award winners.
from EPA News Releases https://ift.tt/PInsMHw