U.S. EPA Lists Nation’s Top Renewables Users

Energy

Published: April 23, 2014 2:34 pm

Last Updated: April 28, 2020 9:04 am

Source: Thinkstock

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released on Wednesday its list of the top 100 organizations in the county that “are choosing to use electricity from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar power.” The EPA’s Green Power Partnership, which includes more than 1,200 members, calculates the ranking based on annual contract amounts of green power usage.

For the seventh year in a row, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) tops the rankings, obtaining 100% of its 3,100 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity used from renewable sources. Kohl’s Corp. (NYSE: KSS) purchases 105% of its 1,536 million kWh from green sources and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) gets 50% of its 1,363 million kWh from renewables. Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) round out the top five.

The EPA noted that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) moved up from 11th to 8th in the current rankings, and that the total combined usage of renewable power by the top 100 partners amounts to nearly 24 billion kWh annually. The top 100 account for nearly 83% of all green power commitments made by all the EPA’s Green Power partners.

Federal agencies fare less well. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, uses 594 million kWh of renewable power, or just 12% of its total consumption of electricity. As a group, federal agencies account for 1.7 billion kWh of renewable electricity consumption.

The top local government user of renewable power is the city of Houston, which gets 48% of its power (622 million kWh) from green sources. The top 30 local governments use a total of 2.8 billion kWh of electricity from renewable sources.

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