Washington — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced the winners of its 2023 Green Energy Leadership Awards, honoring five leading U.S. organizations in EPA’s Green Energy Partnership: Elevance Health, Hormel Foods, Palo Alto Networks, The Home Depot, and Truckee. Meadows Community. college. These winners include a range of different types of organizations that choose renewable energy and embody partnership leadership in the market and principles of driving product innovation, enabling access to green energy, and accelerating the transition to a net-zero electricity sector.
“I commend the 2023 Green Energy Leadership Award winners for motivating new strategies to expand the use of renewable energy.” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Using clean, renewable energy is essential to meeting America’s climate goals, and this year’s winners are innovating — across their core businesses, their supply chains and their communities — to deliver compelling new strategies that will accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy.”
For more than 20 years, the Green Energy Leadership Awards have recognized hundreds of organizations for their exceptional achievements and leadership in the green energy market. This year’s Green Energy Leadership Award recipients use more than 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy annually, enough to power nearly 145,000 American homes for a year. The 2023 award winners are also going beyond just choosing green energy and demonstrating leadership through strategies such as incentivizing employees to access green energy at home, engaging with community solar, and encouraging supply chain partners to reduce emissions.
EPA’s Green Energy Partners drive demand for renewable energy investment in the U.S. green energy market and influence suppliers to transition to green energy, accelerating the development of these resources and leading the way to a clean energy future. Green energy is electricity generated from renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, qualified biomass, and low-impact hydropower. These high-quality renewable sources produce green energy with little air emissions or impact on the environment or human health.
The 2023 EPA Green Energy Leadership Award winners are:
Elevance Health
Elevance Health, Inc. was honored. (Indianapolis, Indiana), an American health insurance company, for its use of green energy and leadership in this sector. Elevance Health has been 100% green energy since 2021 with approximately equal portions received through a 15-year solar financial power purchase agreement (PPA) of approximately 80 million kWh plus 90 million kWh from retail renewables . The Company prioritizes engagement with strategic value chain partners on setting Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and actively engages in community partnerships focused on advancing health equity, including through affordable solar sharing.
Hormel foods
Hormel Foods Corporation (Austin, MN), a global food company, was honored for its use of green energy, community solar development, and employee engagement with renewable energy. Over the past year, Hormel Foods has increased its domestic green energy use in the United States from less than 10% to 100% through a financial power purchase agreement that generates more than 936 million kilowatt-hours of green energy annually. Additionally, Hormel Foods supports community solar in rural areas, sponsors a community solar garden in Wichita, Kansas and serves as an anchor tenant in a community solar project in Montevideo, Minnesota that Hormel employees can participate in. Hormel is also engaging employees in its internal Sustainability Best Ever competition, inspiring global teams to integrate green energy into their operations.
Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. was honored. (Santa Clara, California), a multinational cybersecurity company, in part for its innovation in the use of green energy. Palo Alto Networks recently adopted its science-based targets for reducing global warming as internal key performance indicators (KPIs). Establishing these targets as KPIs links renewable energy use and progress toward emissions reduction targets to a company’s line of credit from investors and their access to capital. This year, Palo Alto Networks supported a green tariff pilot program by purchasing more than 15 million kilowatt hours as one of the first companies to participate in Silicon Valley Power’s corporate renewable energy program. The company also engages employees through the FLEXBenefits incentive program to support and increase access to purchasing renewable electricity and clean technologies for all employees.
home depot
Home Depot, Inc. was honored. (Atlanta, Georgia), a multinational home improvement retailer, for the company’s use of green energy, enabling the development of renewable energy projects, and the installation of electricity storage technologies and projects at retail locations. Home Depot purchases more than 400 million kilowatt hours of wind and solar energy annually. Since 2022, the company has purchased green energy directly from several new projects including a 50 MW wind project in Nebraska and two solar projects in Texas totaling 115 MW. Home Depot also demonstrated its dedication to grid optimization by installing 55 standalone battery storage projects in five different states with a total capacity of more than 12 megawatts to enhance grid and utility resiliency and reduce peak demand costs. In 2022, the company provided retail access to solar panels to more than 7,000 homes and recorded sales of more than 4,000 electric vehicle chargers.
Truckee Meadows Community College
Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC), a community college in Reno, Nevada, was honored for its green energy use and educational programs. Since 2019, TMCC has matched 100% of its electricity service load with more than 7.8 million kilowatt-hours of solar energy purchased through its utility’s Nevada GreenEnergy Rider Tariff. TMCC also installed four on-site solar panels and two wind turbines, which are used as an educational tool to provide hands-on training in the college’s applied technology engineering and renewable energy programs. In 2022-23, TMCC declared a college-wide theme: “Year of Sustainability,” to encourage the use of sustainable concepts in broader areas of classroom instruction and hosted a series of events to educate students about their commitment to green energy.
background
The Green Energy Partnership is a voluntary program that helps increase the use of green energy among American organizations. The goal of the partnership is to strengthen the U.S. market for green energy development as a means of reducing air pollution and other environmental impacts associated with electricity use. In 2021, the partnership included more than 700 partners who voluntarily use more than 85 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy annually. Partners include a wide range of leading organizations such as Fortune 500® companies; Small and medium-sized enterprises; Local, state and federal governments; Colleges and universities. For additional information, please visit the EPA Green Energy Partnership webpage.
The Green Energy Leadership Awards are announced at the Renewable Energy Markets Conference, of which the EPA is the organizing sponsor. Learn more about the winners of the 2023 EPA Green Energy Leadership Award.
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