Month: March 2016

Powdr’s Clean Energy Initiative Meets Good Clean Fun

Snowboarder treks up the snow

With a mission to share, inspire and celebrate lifestyle and mountain sports, Powdr owns and operates eight mountain resorts located across the country. Understanding that the future of these outdoor spaces depends on a serious effort to stop climate change, Powdr supports a variety of carbon cutting and energy saving initiatives at their resorts.

Resorts have sacrificed revenue from selling plastic water bottles on location, commissioned a series of research on climate change and how it will impact the recreation community and created the initiative, Protect Your Playground, to fund ideas that further advance Powdr’s sustainability goals.

In 2015, Powdr partnered with 3Degrees to purchase enough wind RECs to match 100% of the electricity used at their eight resorts. With a mission to connect people to cleaner energy on a massive scale, 3Degrees enlisted their in-house marketing and creative team to design a campaign to:

  • Build the Powdr Green brand
  • Inspire resort-based marketing teams to talk more about carbon neutrality
  • Increase employee confidence on the subject
  • Give Powdr more value out of their REC and carbon offset purchase

 

3Degrees designs campaign logo and boilerplate

Our designers and writers conceptualized the look, feel and tone. The campaign communicates carbon neutrality as a brand ideology people should be proud of.

 

Campaign cover images designed by 3Degrees

We developed social media assets, visuals and copy, to communicate the resort’s investment in renewable energy to their social networks.

 

Powdr e-blast designed by 3Degrees

A template for e-blasts was created to promote the resort’s green initiative during peak sales seasons.

 

Powdr "ask me" buttons designed by 3Degrees

“Ask me” buttons not only prompted resort guests to ask about the campaign, but encouraged employees to stay up to date with Powdr’s sustainability initiative.

 

Get more on 3Degrees + Marketing

Wind Power RECs Meet Two Organizations’ Goals

rhinocerous at zoo

The places people gather can have a tremendous impact on the culture of the surrounding community. Visitors to special attractions, like zoos, are there to encounter something outside and above normal everyday experiences. This level of interest and excitement provides parks with a powerful opportunity to influence – a fact not lost on leadership at the Detroit Zoological Society (DZS).

The Detroit Zoo is Michigan’s largest paid family attraction and draws 1.4 million visitors annually. The Zoo has a goal to provide this broad audience with educational opportunities that lead to the appreciation and stewardship of nature. DZS Greenprint is one way they work toward that goal.

bird and lion

Greenprint is a comprehensive plan that aims at reducing impact as well as increasing green literacy at the Detroit Zoo and Belle Isle Nature Zoo. It sets operational standards for  water and waste management as well as energy. At the Zoo visitors will see solar panels on buildings as well as staff driving solar powered carts. It is also home to the nation’s first zoo-based dry biodigester, which processes waste and turns it into power for the animal hospital. However, needing more power is a fact of life for a facility as large as the 125 acre park. That’s why DZS board member Dr. Terry S. Harvill proposed the idea of matching the balance of the electricity used with clean, renewable wind energy.

Dr. Harvill knew that supporting wind energy by purchasing Green‑e® Energy certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) from 3Degrees would be an effective way to lower the Zoo’s carbon footprint and help meet energy-based goals outlined in Greenprint. As a Vice President of International and Merchant Development for ITC Holdings Harvill pursued the idea as part of ITC’s Charitable Giving Program.

“We have a shared a commitment to environmental stewardship,” said Harvill. “ITC is proud to support the DZS’ sustainability goals by facilitating access to renewable energy.” ITC’s donation lowers the DZS’s carbon footprint by 9,102 metric tons each year. This has an environmental impact similar to:

  • growing 233,386 trees each year for 10 years
  • or taking cars 1,916 off the road for 1 year
  • or not using 21,168 barrels of oil

Wind energy is a clean, renewable resource that can be harnessed wherever the wind blows. Each megawatt of renewable energy generated equals one renewable energy certificate (REC). Selling RECs helps energy producers recoup the expense of investing in alternative technologies which encourages development of cleaner power projects.

About ITC Holdings Corp.
ITC Holdings Corp. (NYSE: ITC) is the nation’s largest independent electric transmission company. Based in Novi, Michigan, ITC invests in the electric transmission grid to improve reliability, expand access to markets, allow new generating resources to interconnect to its transmission systems and lower the overall cost of delivered energy. Through its regulated operating subsidiaries ITCTransmission, Michigan Electric Transmission Company, ITC Midwest and ITC Great Plains, ITC owns and operates high-voltage transmission facilities in Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, serving a combined peak load exceeding 26,000 megawatts along approximately 15,600 circuit miles of transmission line. ITC’s grid development focus includes growth through regulated infrastructure investment as well as domestic and international expansion through merchant and other commercial development opportunities. For more information, please visit ITC’s website at www.itc-holdings.com