The University of California is the largest green power user among higher education institutions in the nation, according to a new ranking released by the Environment Protection Agency.
The university ranked top among 30 colleges and universities who are the part of the Green Power Partnership, a program that encourages the use of green energy to reduce the environmental impacts of conventional electricity use.
According to agency statistics, since 2017, the use of green power at the university has grown from 128M kilowatt hours per year to 273M kilowatt hours.
“Over the next six years, UC will transition to 100 percent clean or renewable sources of electricity,” David Phillips, UC’s associate vice president of Energy and Sustainability, said.
“UC’s power company, which supplies electricity to its eligible campuses and medical centers, will hit that milestone even sooner, with all of its electricity coming from zero-carbon sources by the end of this year.”
Last year, the university pledged to reach 100 percent reliance on a clean energy supply across its campuses by 2025 as a part of its efforts on climate change and its carbon neutrality initiative. It also directed its campuses to reduce their municipal solid waste output by 25 percent by 2025 and by 50 percent by 2030.
The university system has also constituted a University Climate Change Coalition, which aims to initiate climate action at both the local and regional levels.
Overall, the combined green power use of the top 30 schools amounts to more than 3 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, roughly the equivalent of the electrical use of nearly 282,000 average American homes.
Other schools that ranked among the top 10 list of the largest green power users are the University at Buffalo, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Georgetown University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, University of Maryland, University of Oklahoma, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Texas.
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