TINA CASEY
Whether you’re a happy New York Giants fan or a disappointed New England Patriots backer on the morning after the big game, there’s one thing both sides of this year’s Super Bowl can agree on: The winning color was green.
And no, we don’t mean Cee-Lo Green’s halftime show performance alongside headliner Madonna. “Green” as in eco-friendly.
Sure, between air travel, overbooked hotels, packed bars, all-night parties, exhibits, fan activities and busloads of media crews, Super Bowl XLVI generated more solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions than there were yards rushed during the course of the game.
However, the good folks at the NFL Environmental Program are committed to doing their part to help offset all that.
In fact, this year, the 18th year of the program, they seem determined to outdo anything else they’ve ever done. The slate of green programs for Super Bowl XLVI is pretty impressive.
That’s despite the location of this year’s Super Bowl, which took place in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
This year’s NFL Environmental Program includes a waste management effort designed to salvage recyclable and reusable trash, collection and donation of leftover food, and recovery of leftover decorations, office supplies and other materials that could be auctioned off, reused, donated or re-purposed.
The program also features a book and sports equipment-donation center coordinated with local school districts, and a tree-planting program that will put thousands of new trees in local neighborhoods.
The program even covers team travel through the purchase of carbon offsets for air and ground transportation.
As for renewable energy initiatives, here’s where things get a little awkward. It’s awfully nice of Lucas Oil – an oil company, right? – to host a major sporting event that has established a tradition of showcasing alternative energy, but it seems that Lucas Oil is stuck with it.
In fact the NFL is looking not just to meet, but beat, its previous use of renewable energy.
The highlight is a renewable energy certificate purchase through the company Green Mountain Energy, which for the first time will cover all of the major venues, a total of six, instead of only covering the football stadium.
According to Green Mountain’s press materials, that means 15,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy, which will power “everything from the computers in the Motorola Super Bowl XLVI Media Center to the lights that shine down on the teams as they compete during Super Bowl.”
The NFL is also supporting the local “Rebuilding Together” program as its officially sanctioned charity, and as part of the Super Bowl festivities Green Mountain donated a rooftop solar array for a home involved in the program.
It would be a little much to ask Lucas Oil to install solar panels at Lucas Oil Stadium, but that’s the direction other NFL teams are going in. The Philadelphia Eagles have a comprehensive program that includes onsite wind, solar and biofuel to power their Lincoln Field exclusively with renewables.
The Washington Redskins are not too far behind; that franchise has partnered with the company NRG to install a two-megawatt solar array at FedEx Field. The array is part of a public awareness boost for renewable energy that also includes a solar power educational display prominently located outside the stadium.
In the context of the highly charged politics of renewable energy, the curious juxtaposition of the NFL’s ambitious green initiatives with this year’s Super Bowl location isn’t the only awkward moment.
Less than two weeks before the Superbowl, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels used his GOP’s State of the Union response to bash President Obama for denying a construction permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would transport crude oil from Canada’s notorious tar sands down through the midwest, to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
As it turns out, the State of Indiana has been actively lobbying for the Keystone project, even though the pipeline doesn’t go through Indiana.
Last week, Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman fired off a letter to Indiana’s lobbyist, requesting clarification of the state’s interest in the Keystone pipeline, given “the State of Indiana thus appears to receive no clear benefit from the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.”
It’s not clear that the pipeline would have any direct impact on job creation in Indiana, especially given that the steel pipes themselves are reportedly being manufactured in India, not Indiana, to the chagrin of American steelworkers.
Waxman’s letter also points out that the Keystone pipeline could in fact be detrimental to the regional economy, due to an anticipated rise in oil prices resulting from its construction (the pipeline is designed partly to relieve an ongoing crude oil glut in the Midwest).
According to Waxman’s letter, the lobbyist received about $50,000 in Indiana state taxpayer funds for her services.
That sure would have bought a lot of renewable energy certificates for Super Bowl XLVI.
