West Long Branch, NJ — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recognized Monmouth University as an Individual Conference Champion of the 2016-17 College & University Green Power Challenge for using more green power than any other school in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
Green power is zero-emissions electricity generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, eligible biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro.
Using green power helps accelerate the development of new renewable energy capacity nationwide and helps users reduce their carbon footprints.
Since April 2006, EPA’s Green Power Partnership has tracked and recognized the collegiate athletic conferences with the highest combined green power use within the program.
​The Individual Conference Champion Award recognizes the school that uses the most green power in a qualifying conference.
Monmouth beat its conference rivals by using nearly 12 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power, representing 56 percent of the university’s annual electricity usage.
Monmouth is procuring a utility green power product from ConEdison Solutions. This demonstrates a proactive choice to switch away from traditional sources of electricity generation and support cleaner renewable energy alternatives.
According to the U.S. EPA, Monmouth's green power use of nearly 12 million kWh is equivalent to the electricity use of nearly 1,100 average American homes annually.
In the 2016-17 challenge, the 36 collegiate conferences and 98 schools competing collectively used nearly 3.2 billion kWh of green power.
EPA will restart the 12th season of the College & University Green Power Challenge in the fall of 2017 and conclude in the spring of 2018.
For more information, visit: www.epa.gov/greenpower/college-and-university-challenge.
This is one of a long string of “green accolades” for the university, which was recently singled out as one of the country’s most environmentally responsible universities in The Princeton Review’s Guide to 361 Green Colleges: 2016 edition.
The university also was named a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2016 Green Power Club.
It has also been named the New Jersey Clean Energy School of the Year, received the New Jersey Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award for Environmental Leadership and was the first New Jersey private university to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the EPA, committing to be an environmental steward and reduce its carbon footprint.
The university has installed solar panels on the majority of its academic buildings to cultivate renewable energy.