No, not the same thing. Yes, both very important.
Teams, stadiums, and leagues across the country -- and around the world -- are using a mixture of energy efficiency measures, on-site renewable energy, and renewable energy certificates to clean up their energy portfolios.
Webster says:
Renewable energy (RE): energy from a source that is not
depleted when used, such as wind or solar power. A subset of which is Green Power: energy from sources that produce electricity with an environmental
profile superior to conventional power technologies and produce no fossil-fuel
based greenhouse gas emissions.
Energy efficiency (EE): a way of managing and restraining the growth in energy consumption. Something is more energy efficient if it delivers more services for the same energy input, or the same services for less energy input.
Having worked in the EE industry for a few years now,
I would be remiss not to say that in many cases, energy efficiency should be
the first thing you tackle.
Whether you’re working with a stadium, arena, or
single-family home, do what you can to use the least amount of energy so that
you won’t need to produce (or purchase) as much
to cover your usage.
Otherwise, it’s still like letting money fly out the window, just a
different window open at a different time...
However, if the cost
of that energy is not what you’re most concerned about, then when your electricity
is coming from renewable, green sources like wind and solar you can use all you
want with little worry about effects on the environment. So as Allen Hershkowitz of the NRDC
said at the 2014 Green Sports Alliance Summit, “Have all the night games you
want”!
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A couple of football energy facts:
On a typical NFL game day, roughly three to seven
megawatts of electricity are used in and around the stadiums. It takes TEN megawatts
of energy to power Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium (now -slowly- testing out
LED field lighting!) on game day, which is significantly more than the entire electrical
capacity of the country of Liberia.
According to one study
of the English Premier League, the average soccer match in England has a carbon
footprint of 5,160 metric tons, equivalent to the
energy consumption of half a million gallons of gas or
enough to power 772 American homes each year.
