Westminster Farms Inc., a dairy farm located in Vermont, and Green Mountain Power, which provides electricity to 90,000 residents in Vermont, are working together to create green energy electricity for local residents and businesses. It is a joint investment between the two, not only to make Vermont a greener state, but also to cut the cost of electricity production during these hard economic times.

Westminster Farms invested $700,000 and Green Mountain Power invested $175,000 into this green electric power project, but it also got help from both the U.S. and Vermont Departments of Agriculture.

Even though you may think that the desert is no place for anything green, the students at California’s College of the Desert located in Palm Desert are determined to prove you wrong.

Working with the Riverside County Economic Development Agency, an organization aimed to enhance the economic growth of the surrounding county, and using $2 million in economic stimulus funds, the college will train students in several projects for renewable energy. These projects will focus on wind energy and solar energy.

Middlebury College, which we have mentioned in previous 2008 Sustainability Report Card and Sierra Club’s Cool Schools posts, is considered to be one of the greenest colleges in our country. After switching a few years ago to burning wood chips in addition to oil to heat the campus, the college is now going for a cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative green energy fuel resource: willow shrubs.

The college currently buys 20,000 wood chips a year from local loggers to heat half of the campus, and the other half is heated by oil. By switching to willow shrubs as an alternative fuel source the school will save over $1.5 million a year in oil costs.

In an effort to inspire incoming freshmen students to go green, the University of Virginia Bookstore and Housing Division have filled demonstration green dorm rooms full of eco-friendly products.

These green dorm rooms, which have everything from Seventh Generation trash bags and paper towels to green energy efficient microwaves, will be an alternative to traditional dorm rooms, which usually ignore sustainability efforts.

Baltimore City is set to launch a new green energy efficiency and conservation program called The Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge, which will challenge various neighborhoods to reduce their energy consumption over the next nine months.

Warren Wilson College has officially become the first college campus to have a building with LEED Platinum certification as defined under the U.S. Green Building Council. That’s quite a feat considering that the U.S. Green Building Council sets the highest standards for green buildings.

The EcoDorm was built by a committee of Warren Wilson students, faculty and administrators, with the help of the Samsel Architects of Asheville, a North Carolina firm that strives to incorporate green building techniques into their designs.

Did you know that the average desktop computer consumes about 354-kilowatt hours of energy a day, and that 90% of that energy consumption comes from the computer being idle? So can you imagine how much energy a supercomputer consumes?

Researchers at IBM realized that about half of a supercomputer’s energy consumption comes from cooling the system to keep it from overheating, so they have designed a new green energy savings computer that will recycle the water-cooled microchips into heat for the surrounding room. It’s called the Aquasar.

More than a dozen U.S. colleges signed up to support Earth Hour on March 28, so to extend this preservation of the planet they can also pledge to be car-free on World Environment Day, which is Friday, June 5.

If you don’t know what World Environment Day is, it’s a day that was created by the United Nations General Assembly to increase environmental awareness through political and public attention.

In an effort to boost educational opportunities and student achievement, as well as to combat the fight against global warming, last Thursday the House passed a $6.4 billion school modernization bill that would build more green energy efficient schools.

This bill would also provide funds for school districts along the Gulf Coast that were damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The ultimate goal of the bill is to have 100% of the funds go towards green projects by 2015.

Living an eco lifestyle includes going green in every aspect of your life, from using natural cleaning products that work to wearing organic clothing.

But did you ever think that a vending machine, which operates 24 hours a day and consumes thousands of kilowatt-hours of energy each year, would also be able to become a green energy efficient vending machine?