I know football fans feel pretty strongly about doing things exactly the same way every time, lest their switch in underwear or beer brand or whatever be the butterfly’s wing that leads to their favorite team tanking. So I have some bad news for you guys: there will be some changes this year. But take heart. Even if this makes your team lose, it’s in the name of making Super Bowl XLVI the greenest one yet.
It’s still going to use a gargantuan amount of energy, of course, not even counting the electricity you weirdos waste leaving the TV on to watch sexist commercials and men in capri pants all day. But the NFL is cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 14,000 tons. (No word on what happens with the nacho gas emissions. Hey-ooooo!)
They won’t be directly powering the stadium with alternative fuels or anything. What they’re doing instead is buying 15,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy credits from a wind farm in North Dakota. Through a little bit of environmental accounting mumbo-jumbo, this purchase offsets the Super Bowl’s massive energy expenditures — ALL OF THEM, reportedly, including a month of electricity use at the stadium and conference center and a week of occupancy in the four major NFL hotels.
Green Mountain Energy, which provides the credits, has a fun infographic showing the impact:
