Amherst College
IN-25: Innovation B

Five of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges have formed a pioneering collaborative that will allow them to offset 46,000 megawatt hours per year of their collective electrical needs with electricity created at a new solar power facility to be built in Farmington, Maine. The partnership represents the first collaborative purchase of New England-generated solar electricity by higher-education institutions. Amherst, Bowdoin, Hampshire, Smith and Williams colleges are partnering with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, a leading clean energy company, which will construct a utility-scale solar power facility that annually will create enough electricity to power about 5,000 New England homes. The New England College Renewable Partnership is innovative and impactful in several ways: - It facilitates the development of additional solar electricity generation in New England. - It will have a significant sustainability impact, moving each of the five campuses closer to their climate-action goals. - It helps each school manage costs by “locking in” the price of electricity for the next 20 years. - And, most importantly, it provides market access that would not have been available to individual institutions, offering a scalable model that other colleges and universities can follow. Through the partnership, Amherst will purchase 10,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy, or approximately half of its annual electricity use — and nearly all of its purchased electricity. (The other half is derived from a combined heat and power plant on campus.) This partnership will enable Amherst to reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 3,200 metric tons, decreasing its greenhouse gas emissions by 17.5 percent.