The University at Buffalo has won another Mid-American Conference championship.
The Environmental Protection Agency named UB the conference's top dog for its efforts in pursuing cleaner energy options, if only because the university was the only MAC school eligible for competition.
Each year, the EPA recognizes higher education institutions around the country as a part of the College and University Green Power Challenge and categorizes the schools by athletic conference. Green energy is typically categorized as any energy source that does not come from fossil fuels, including wind turbines, solar panels and biomass.
UB was also the only SUNY school named in the challenge.
The UB Green office is hopeful that the university can increase the total green energy it uses from 15 percent to 20 percent by the end of the year, according to Jim Simon, associate environmental educator of UB Green.
"We haven't reached out [to other MAC schools] directly," Simon said. "...There are sustainability offices and environmental programs at a couple of these other schools in the MAC, but for whatever reason, they either don't purchase green power, which is a shame, or maybe they just didn't report it this year."
Simon said that UB has been moving to increase its green energy output since 2003 and isn't done yet.
"We're going to continue to explore opportunities to purchase green power," Simon said.
UB Green is currently drafting a plan for the university to achieve climate neutrality. Several sustainability forums have been held since President John B. Simpson signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment in March 2007 to aid in the process. The draft is due to the committee by Sept. 15. Simon said that he would categorize the organization's recognition by the EPA within the context of UB's bigger plan.
"There might be opportunities in the future to actually buy the output from a wind turbine that's in the area," Simon said. "So that electricity would be coming to UB just like the electricity that comes into your house."
The EPA's Green Power Partnership tracked the green power purchasing of colleges and universities during the 2008-09 academic year. Conferences that qualify as an EPA Green Power Partner needed to purchase at least 10 million kilowatt-hours of green power combined to be eligible for the challenge, according to the Green Power Challenge's Web site. Forty-four institutions in 22 athletic conferences competed.
The Ivy League was named the overall conference champion, collectively purchasing over 225 million kilowatt-hours of green energy. The University of Pennsylvania led the way for the conference with nearly 193 million kilowatt-hours.
The challenge had UB locked in at 16,350,000 kilowatt-hours.
Among colleges and universities, the partnership also includes Fortune 500 companies, small and medium businesses and government institutions.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
