Sacramento Kings Announce Partnership with Green Sports Alliance

Sacramento Kings Announce Partnership withGreen Sports AllianceNationally-Acclaimed Group to Advise Kings on “GreenPrint” Sustainability Agenda for ESC

The Sacramento Kings announced today a new partnership with the Green Sports Alliance (GSA), a nationally acclaimed non-profit organization dedicated to helping sports teams, venues and leagues enhance their environmental performance.“We’re proud to join the Green Sports Alliance – it’s one more step on our journey to building the greenest arena in the greenest state in America,” said Kings President Chris Granger. “The Kings are committed to environmental sustainability because it’s the socially responsible and fiscally prudent path to take. Energy efficiency measures will help us save money, which we can reinvest into community programs, and recycling materials from the Downtown Plaza will find new life in projects throughout Sacramento.”In joining the Alliance, the Kings and Sacramento will become part a national network of top professional and collegiate sports teams and entertainment and sports facilities who have pledged a commitment to measuring their environmental performance, developing strategies and goals to reduce their impact and monitoring their progress. Alliance members include NBA teams like the Miami Heat, Portland Trail Blazers and Phoenix Suns, as well as top sports facilities like the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Verizon Center in Washington, DC."The Sacramento Kings have shown great industry leadership in making a clear and public commitment to environmental sustainability," said Green Sports Alliance Executive Director Martin Tull. "We look forward to the opportunity to work with the Kings as an Alliance member to learn from their existing facility operations and help apply advanced environmental strategy to the planning and design of the new arena."Going forward, a team of ESC sustainability advisors will identify and pursue specific strategies and initiatives to promote green design, construction and operations at the facility. GSA, and its vast member network, will provide additional support to the Kings advisors and initiatives. A wide range of ideas is already under consideration, including:

• Pursuing opportunities to salvage, re-use and recycle materials during the Downtown Plaza demolition.

• Leveraging energy efficiency strategies that range from the use of LED fixtures to utilizing the Delta Breeze as a natural cooling and temperature control mechanism. The ESC is anticipated to save enough energy over the course of a year to power a 200,000 square foot office building.

• Implementing a number of innovative technologies including electric vehicle chargers and advanced lighting control, as well as tracking technologies that report the ESC’s ongoing sustainable performance. Similar monitoring technologies have been known to enhance a building’s performance by as much as 15 percent.

• Evaluating the viability of installing up to 50,000 square feet of solar panels on the roof of the ESC, which would generate enough electricity to power over 120 Sacramento homes.

• Installing low-flow plumbing fixtures throughout the facility, which can save over 40 percent of a typical arena’s water consumption, preserving enough water to fill five Olympic swimming pools every year.

• Facilitating more efficient transportation through the use of light rail, biking, walking and streetcars in addition to electric car charging stations

• Promoting the Sacramento “Farm to Fork” movement by offering locally-sourced food and agriculture in ESC food and beverage concessions.

The Kings will be featured presenters at the 2014 Green Sports Alliance Summit on July 21-23 in Santa Clara, CA, which brings together more than 600 industry stakeholders to share and discuss environmental practices and proven solutions that help to advance the green sports movement.Today’s announcement also represents the latest in a series of activities undertaken by the Kings to develop a robust green and sustainability agenda for the new ESC.

• September 2013: The Kings committed to pursuing a LEED Gold certification, which would make the ESC the first LEED Gold in California and one of the first in the country to achieve this prestigious status. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a widely recognized green building certification process administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Achieving the “gold” certification status will require ambitious goals in a range of areas, including site sustainability, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.

• October 2013: The Kings convened a focus group of top sustainability and green technology experts and advocates in the Sacramento region to discuss and vet a range of specific initiatives and strategies to ensure a strong green presence in the ESC project.

• April 2014: The Kings completed a comprehensive, 13-month environmental impact analysis of the ESC site, which identified a range of significant sustainability benefits of moving from a suburban Natomas location to an urban downtown location. For example, studies concluded that the downtown location will reduce average miles traveled per attendee by 20 percent, cut overall air emissions by 24 percent, and reduce travel-related greenhouse gas emissions per attendee by 36 percent by 2020.

The Kings will release a full sustainability agenda on the ESC, called the “Sacramento ESC GreenPrint” at a later stage in the project.Click here to see the release.