Green Power Community Challenge
Launched in September 2010, EPA hosted a national, year-long campaign to encourage communities coast-to-coast to use renewable energy and fight climate change. The goal of the Green Power Community Challenge was to double the collective amount of green power used by EPA Green Power Communities. As part of the campaign, Communities competed to see which one could achieve the highest green power percentage of total electricity use and which one could use the most green power.
And the winners are . . .
EPA declared the winning communities on September 27, 2011:
Most kilowatts-hours of green power: Washington, D.C. Green Power Community
The EPA Green Power Community of Washington, D.C., won the Challenge title of using the most amount of green power annually. District Government, businesses, and residents are collectively purchasing more than 772 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power annually, enough green power to meet 8 percent of the community's total electricity use.
Highest percentage of green power: Brookeville, Md. Green Power Community
The EPA Green Power Community of Brookeville, Md., led the Challenge competition of achieving the highest green power percentage of total electricity use. Nearly half of Brookeville's local government, residential, and business electricity usage comes from green power sources.
The Challenge far surpassed its goal to double the collective amount of green power used by EPA Green Power Communities to 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually. At the conclusion of the Challenge, EPA's Green Power Communities were collectively using more than 3.3 billion kWh of green power annually, reducing greenhouse gas emissions equal to the carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) from the annual electricity use of more than 284,000 homes.
Who Participated? To participate, a local city, town, village, county, or tribal governments must join EPA's Green Power Partnership and become an EPA Green Power Community. At the conclusion of the Challenge, more than 30 EPA Green Power Communities competed in the Challenge. View the final Green Power Community Challenge Rankings.
How Did The Challenge Work? Over the span of a year, EPA GPCs tracked and reported their collective green power use and green power percentage of total electricity use. EPA provided technical and outreach assistance to participants throughout the Challenge to help them increase their green power usage rates.
GPCs were ranked according to these categories on EPA's website on a quarterly schedule. Learn more about the GPC Challenge (PDF) (2 pp, 459K, About PDF).
Is EPA Planning on Continuing the GPC Challenge? Yes! EPA is happy to announce that the Green Power Community Challenge will occur again over the next year. For details and more information, visit the 2011-2012 Green Power Community Challenge homepage.
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