EPA Names Santa Clara the Top
Green Power Community in the United States

July 7, 2010

The City of Santa Clara has secured the top spot in the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Communities rankings with more than 163,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of the communitys electricity usage coming from voluntary purchases of green power.

Santa Clara captured the top ranking thanks to large numbers of city residents and businesses choosing to purchase renewable energy. In 2009, businesses in Santa Clara, led by Santa Clara University and Applied Materials, purchased almost 38,000 MWhs of renewable energy certificates (RECs) through Silicon Valley Powers Santa Clara Green Power program. The 4,000 residential participants in the Santa Clara program purchased the equivalent of over 25,000 MWh of wind and solar.

In addition, some Santa Clara businesses supported renewable energy by purchasing RECs from other vendors. Most notably, the nations largest purchaser of RECs is Santa Clara based Intel, which purchased the equivalent of over 1.4 million MWhs in 2009 for their national operations from a nation-wide supplier. Santa Clara Green Power, jointly managed by Silicon Valley Power and 3Degrees, has a customer participation rate of 8 percent, the sixth best customer participation rate in the country.

“This achievement demonstrates our businesses' and residents' leadership in taking responsibility for the environmental impact of their electricity use,” said Larry Owens of Silicon Valley Power. “By installing on-site renewable power, or by choosing to green their electricity with programs like Santa Clara Green Power, our city residents and businesses are accelerating the nations movement to a new, renewable energy economy.”

Santa Clarans' voluntary green power purchases, which are above and beyond the utilitys own purchases of renewable energy, helped prevent the emission of approximately 117,142 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from over 22,000 passenger vehicles a year, or the CO2 emissions from burning more than 600 railcars worth of coal.

This first place ranking by the EPA comes on the heels of SVP achieving fourth in the U.S. for new solar electric installations based on the average number of solar watts per customer installed in 2009, as ranked by the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA). SVP expects to double this pace of new solar installation in 2010.

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