Denver's Pepsi Arena Going Green: Venue for the NCAA Tourney and 2008 Democratic Convention Starts 'Play Clean' Initiative

Fans of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) basketball tournament may have seen the enormous "Play Clean" banners and signs festooned around the Pepsi Center during western division play. Play Clean is a new initiative at Colorado's largest sports, entertainment, and convention center, and is going to be the first such venue to go green in an initiative backed by the arena's owners, the entertainment industry, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The conversion to a 100% "green" sports facility is the first of its kind in the United States.

"These are important firsts," said Dave Jolette in a press release. Jolette is Kroenke Sports vice president of venue operations, which owns the arena. "Pepsi Center's involvement with 'Climate Leaders' represents a commitment that we hope other arenas will follow."

The EPA's Climate Leaders program is a public-private partnership initiative for companies both large and small to take stock of their greenhouse gas emissions and for those companies to create a set of goals and company programs to reduce those emissions. Companies then report back their results to the EPA. Companies such as 3M, DuPont, Green Mountain Energy Company and Anheuser-Busch have already signed on to the initiative, with goals ranging from 3% to 100% reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions over the next few years.

The nine-year old Pepsi Center will achieve this lofty goal through a series of steps, some of which will be quite visible to the visitors to the stadium, such as the 52 solar panels being used to power the Blue Sky Grill. Other measures being taken will be a 100% recycling campaign, with mechanisms for recycling cardboard and grease already installed. The goal: Achieve all waste generated from the arena being recycled, and none landing in the landfill. The recycling program started this week in conjunction with the NCAA basketball tournament.

The Pepsi Center has over 2 million visitors every year, and is the host stadium for the NBA Denver Nuggets, NHL, Colorado Avalanche, NLL Colorado Mammoth and AFL Colorado Crush. The arena hosts more than 200 sporting events and concerts a year and is the site of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Perhaps the most invisible part of the Play Clean program will be the set of renewable energy certificates (REC) purchased from Georgia-based Sterling Planet. Sterling Planet offers Green-e renewable energy certificates, by partnering with governments, companies, and individuals to achieve carbon neutrality, and helps fund renewable energy initiatives at power generation companies through the sale of the certificates. According to the Sterling web site "Ours is a comprehensive, integrated approach, the first of its kind. Rather than simply urging energy efficiency, we deliver the nation's first White Tags™ energy efficiency certificates. Add to that Green-e certified renewable energy certificates (RECs), which we pioneered in 2001, and direct carbon offsets with verified emissions reductions. This all-in-one approach eases any client's shift to carbon neutrality."