Oct 12 2010
Drexel University has reached an accord with Community Energy Inc a renewable energy developing and marketing company to buy Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) that match 100% of its electricity usage.
This purchase will rank the university one among the top 50 wind energy buyers in the country. The purchase of REC will guarantee that 84,268 MWh wind power will correspondingly enter the national power grid. The latest Green Power Partnership ranking of the Environmental Protection Agency predicts that the buying of REC will place the University as one among the five universities that purchase clean energy.
The Greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator of Environmental Protection Agency indicates that the environmental benefits accrued from the REC purchase includes reduction of roughly 60,518 metric tons of CO2 emissions every year which is comparable to carbon intake of trees planted over 12,904 acres or stopping the usage of around 11,571 passenger cars from the road. The University was feted for its leadership in energy efficiency by PennFuture an environmental promotion agency with a Green Power Award. The energy efficiency efforts of the University includes installing of an energy supervising system at its main campus, use of biodiesl in the buses that run within the campus, use of hybrid and battery using vehicles, bike sharing program, installing devices for increasing light efficiency and energy control and utilizing of ice thermal energy for the purpose of cooling and other reusing attempts.
James Tucker, the University’s Student Life and Administrative Services programs senior vice president, expressed his happiness to lead the other universities and colleges with eco friendly efforts. He added that usage of electricity that can be matched with one produced from clean renewable energy sources is the university’s biggest pledge to energy sustainability and wanted other institutions to emulate the program.
Source: http://www.drexel.edu/