Green Sports Alliance

Background

The Green Sports Alliance is an organization with a mission to help sports teams, venues and leagues enhance their environmental performance. The founding members of the Alliance are from six different professional sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and Major League Soccer (MLS). The Founding partners include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. The Green Sports Alliance supports sports organizations and leagues in advancing and coordinating their work on behalf of environmental stewardship.

The Green Sports Alliance is currently comprised of over 35 member sports teams representing over 20 million square feet of sports venues and facilities. Supporting the Better Buildings Challenge encourages professional sports teams and their venues to implement conservation projects that will result in significant financial and environmental performance. As a Better Buildings Challenge partner, the Alliance will aim to reduce the energy use of member facilities by at least 20% by 2020 in aggregate. The Green Sports Alliance members are identifying and undertaking energy conservation projects and are promoting the Better Buildings Challenge to all new members and partners. Green Sports Alliance members are already demonstrating that this goal is attainable. The Seattle Mariners and Portland Trail Blazers have implemented conservation strategies and facility improvements that have resulted in energy savings of 30 percent in under three years. Since joining the Challenge, CenturyLink Field, home to the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders FC, has completed an energy retrofit which will reduce its energy use by 16 percent. In Los Angeles, AEG’s STAPLES Center is implementing a variety of conservation measures through their ISO 14001 certified Environmental Management System to reduce electricity consumption overall by 12%. Most recently they have begun a comprehensive lighting retrofit that will replace almost 3,000 halogen fixtures with more energy efficient LEDs throughout the facility by early 2012, saving over $80,000 per year.