82 | Business World Magazine |
May 2013
“It is exciting to see the number of stake-
holders that have joined in the discussion to
address climate change,” says Green Power
Partnership Program Director Blaine Colli-
son. Noting the number of participants who
recently attended the 2013 Climate Leader-
ship Conference, co-sponsored by the EPA,
Collison says he is encouraged to see increas-
ing interest and support with so many asking
what they can do to help.
Collison says the Green Power Partner-
ship emerged from the framework which led
to the successful adoption of the Energy Star
program. “We saw that with Energy Star, the
labeling for efficiency performance had been
tremendously successful ... and we thought
it would be possible to do something similar
for the supply side,” says Collison.
To achieve energy and emission goals
benefiting climate conditions, Collison says
standards were developed which proposed
requirements on the amount of renewable
energy being utilized by participating orga-
nizations. Those rates are established on a
sliding scale that is based on the respective
participant’s energy consumption (mini-
mum requirement is three percent). The pro-
gram also defines which resources are consid-
ered green power, such as wind power, solar
power and biomass. Members of the Green
Power Partnership, companies, school sys-
tems and municipalities have increasingly
