Beauty abounds on the Santa Barbara Bowl’s 17-acre island of open space, so it is only natural that we want to protect and take care of this land. The Bowl, a concert-industry leader in greening procedures, maintains and develops community-leading practices for reducing environmental impact through water and energy conservation, solar generation, recycling, traffic mitigation and waste reduction.

Today, our Greening the Bowl initiative seeks to make the venue as close to carbon neutral as possible. The Bowl became the first carbon-neutral outdoor concert venue in the U.S. in 2012. Better World Energy, Inc. is one important partner that is helping the Bowl stay carbon-neutral.

For the third consecutive year, Better World Energy has donated wind-generated Renewable Energy Certificates, which offset all the grid-based energy consumed by the Santa Barbara Bowl each year.

Through the donation of zero emission energy generated from wind farms, the Bowl neutralized the environmental impact of its electricity consumption from 2012 to 2014. In addition, the installation of thirty-six solar panels at the Bowl have generated 28,895kWh hours of electricity on site and saved 491,221lbs of Co2.

“The Santa Barbara Bowl is committed to doing everything it can to have as small a carbon footprint as possible,” said Rick Boller, executive director of the Santa Barbara Bowl. “We are honored to have a partner like Better World Energy whose foresight and leadership have enabled the Bowl to achieve many of its environmental goals.”

The donation of 673 megawatt-hours of wind generated Renewable Energy Certificates over the last three years is equivalent to the emission reductions of removing 107 vehicles from the road for one year.

“We are proud to partner with such a dynamic venue and organization whose environmental leadership in water conservation, recycling, and reductions in resources is so important at this time. The Santa Barbara Bowl is arguably the U.S.’s greenest venue, and we are thrilled to support their commitment to carbon neutrality,” says John Smigelski, CEO of Better World Energy. “Patrons and performers at the Santa Barbara Bowl can focus on the music, without worrying about the environmental impact of this great venue. Like a catchy song, we hope that carbon neutrality will spread beyond the Santa Barbara Bowl, and we look forward to working with artists to help make the rest of their tours more sustainable.”

You can join the Bowl and Better World Energy to a greener Santa Barbara. Visit Better World Energy’s website for tips on how you can reduce your footprint on Mother Earth.