Shop at Kohl's, buy your groceries at Whole Foods, drink Pepsi, and read this blog while on a Dell powered by Intel

The EPA has a neat website that shows the top purchasers of green power across the private and public sectors, and also academia. The top 50 rankings are by total green power used for electricity, with Intel coming in at #1, Pepsi at #2, and Kohl's at #3. A lot of companies actually purchase 100% of their electricity from green sources such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, or biomass. Dell was #4 overall but purchased a whopping 158% of their electricity needs from green sources, compared to 46% for top ranked Intel. You can also view the top green power purchases by federal or local government. It is good to know that the EPA gets 100% of its electricity from green sources. The DOE, however, only gets 3% of its total electricity from green power, which is pretty sad since they should be leading the way. Let's hope that DOE Secretary Chu does something to change this. Come to think of it, I would hope that the Obama administration sets a precedent by mandating that all electricity used by Federal buildings come from the green energy sources listed above. I am a believer that government can and should use its purchasing muscle to create markets for emerging and socially and environmentally beneficial technologies like clean and green energy. Imagine the impact on our clean tech industry if the federal government mandated that its agencies get 100% of their electricity from green power sources? Imagine if the state and local governments followed suit? That would be huge!