University of New Hampshire
OP-6: Clean and Renewable Energy

We have a campus co-generation plant, powered largely by landfill gas, which supplies the vast majority of our electric needs. However, we sell the RECs associated with the production of this power, so claim 0.

As mentioned above, EcoLine, a landfill gas pipeline constructed by NH in partnership with Waste Management, is the primary fuel source for the on-campus COGEN plant for heating, cooling and electricity.

UNH sells REC's for the electricity generated off our EcoLine landfill gas pipeline into our cogeneration plan - but retain the rights to the environmental attributes of the thermal energy generated.

https://www.unh.edu/sustainability/campus-initiatives/energy

We also have a small solar thermal installation on campus.

Our award-winning Northwest Heating Plant uses dry wood-chips sourced in the region--though it is not included in the figures noted above since we can not confirm FSC certification for all of our wood chip vendors.

Green e Certified Wind Renewable Energy Certificates from 3Degrees Group. 89,180 RECs. Green e Reporting Year 2022. 

We purchased 89,180 MWh because that was equal to our previous year's total electricity demand on campus (both the electricity we purchased and the electricity we generated on-site, and we wanted to ensure that we could legitimately state that 100% of our electricity use is renewable.)

UNH is powering its campus with enriched and purified natural gas, courtesy of the local landfill, meaning that every bit of trash that ends up there ends up powering the university (Durham) while lowering energy costs and decreasing environmental impact. UNH sells Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from this project and reinvests part of the proceeds back into energy efficiency initiatives on campus. As such, we cannot claim the renewable benefits associated with on-campus electricity production. To counter this, and to further support the development of renewable energy technologies and markets in the US we purchase Green Certified Renewable Energy Credits. Our generation mix indicated above, then, is based on that REC purchase.

Based on the energy allocations used for our GHG inventory (which are themselves based on best practice guidance from the EPA Climate Leaders program), roughly 60% of the energy used to power our co-generation plant is allocated to thermal energy production and 40% is allocated to electricity production. Since, as noted above, we retain the thermal renewable energy credits associated with our use of local landflll gas, the figure above under "Option 2" includes the renewable thermal energy we utilize from the Ecoline pipeline; it also includes our solar thermal installations.