General Motors Receives Green Leadership Award From US EPA

General Motors has received a 2019 Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

According to the EPA, these awards are given to companies who display “their commitment and contribution to helping advance the development of the nation’s voluntary green power market.” The EPA defines “green power” as “electricity generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources,” such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro.

GM says it was one of only seven American organizations nationwide to receive the Green Power Leadership Award for direct project engagement. GM received the award for achieving a number of renewable energy milestones, which included:

• Exceeding its original renewable energy goal of 125 megawatts (GM claims it achieved a high 416MW).
• Advancing its renewable energy goal as a signatory of RE100, a global initiative uniting influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity.
• Executing the first green tariff in Michigan with Consumers Energy.
• Three new virtual power purchase agreements for wind energy totaling over 800 million kilowatt-hours coming online in 2018.

“We are proud for this recognition from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” GM’s lead carbon optimization engineer, Erin Lawrence said in a statement. “Our efforts and those of other sustainably minded corporations help accelerate the development of renewable resources and advance this market in the U.S. Leveraging renewable power is a demonstration of our commitment to reducing carbon emissions while supporting our RE100 goal to have 100% of our electricity use from renewable energy by 2050.”

In addition to receiving a Green Power award, GM is currently No. 6 on EPA’s Green Power Partnership Top 30 On-site generation list and recently earned a spot on the EPA National Top 100 List of the largest green power users from the Green Power Partnership, coming in at No. 29. GM is also the only automotive company on the list despite other car companies having very large manufacturing presences in the US.

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