The Philadelphia Phillies are still trying to close out the World Series, but the team has already been declared winners off the field. The National League Champions were among the winners cited in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards. The announcement was made at the the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference in Denver, Colo.

EPA’s Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program helping to increase the use of green power among leading U.S. organizations. The program encourages organizations to purchase green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with conventional electricity use. The EPA says the program has hundreds of partner organizations buying billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually.

According to the EPA, the Philadelphia Phillies are the first Major League Baseball team to join the Green Power Partnership. The baseball club buys 20 million kilowatt-hours annually from wind and biomass resources, enough to power 100 percent of the annual electricity use for Citizens Bank Park.

Here is the complete list of the 2008 EPA Green Power Purchaser Award winners:

On-Site Generation

• Kohl’s Department Stores
• Lundberg Family Farms

Green Power Purchasing

• City of Houston, Texas
• The Estee Lauder Companies, Inc.
• ING
• Merritt 7 Venture, LLC
• Oregon State University
• PepsiCo, Inc.
• The Philadelphia Phillies
• Powdr Resorts
• U.S. Air Force

Green Power Partner of the Year

• Bellingham, Washington Community
• Cisco Systems, Inc.
• Intel Corporation
• University of Pennsylvania
• WhiteWave Foods Company

DOE Green Power Supplier Awards

New Green Power Program or Company

• AmerenUE

Small Residential/Commercial Green Power Program or Supplier of the Year

• City of Palo Alto Utilities

Large Commercial/Institutional Green Power Program or Supplier of the Year

• 3Degrees
• Sterling Planet

CRS Market Development Awards

Green Power Beacon Award

• Portland General Electric
• Honorable Mention: Detroit Edison

Green Power Pilot Award

• Energy Action Coalition
• Honorable Mention: Green Mountain Energy

Green Power Pioneer

• Dr. Jan Hamrin

Related link:

• The Green Power Network –  U.S. government web site provides green power market information

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

Bellingham, Washington, is a coastal community near the Canadian border, rated by several popular magazines as the best place to live in the United States. The community received EPA’s Partner of the Year Award in 2007 and continues to display national leadership in the purchase and support of green power.
In early 2007, by a unanimous city council vote, the Bellingham local government chose to lead by example by buying 100 percent green power for all city-owned facilities. Later the same year, the city partnered with the local utility’s green power program and a local non-profit organization to launch the Bellingham Green Power Community Challenge. The goal of the challenge was to increase green power purchasing among the city’s residents and businesses to more than 2 percent of the city-wide electricity use.

To date, the community has far surpassed that original goal and is now buying more than 81 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy certificates (RECs). This amounts to nearly 11 percent of the community’s total electricity use. More than 2,400 households and businesses have enrolled to buy green power through the challenge. The community’s purchase resulted in EPA recognizing the Community of Bellingham as the first EPA Green Power Community in Washington State.