The US Environmental Protection Agency released its Green Power Top 25 list yesterday, a compilation of the greatest renewable energy use by a set of 600 "partner" organizations across the US who agree to preferentially buy green power. All told, the green power partner firms consumed over four million megawatt-hours of renewable energy in 2005, a nearly 100% increase over the 2004 total.

The 2006 Top 25 green power purchasers are buying enough energy to power more than 300,000 homes a year, which is also comparable to removing the emissions of nearly 400,000 cars from the road annually.

Topping the list is the US Air Force, which used over a million megawatt-hours of renewable power, 11% of its total consumption (a combination of biomass, geothermal, micro-hydro, solar and wind). More notable is the new #2 entry, Whole Foods Market, which recently shifted to a 100% renewable energy footing -- and managed to use over 450 thousand megawatt-hours of green energy.