The Heritage Classic Foundation, which runs Hilton Head Island's annual PGA Tour event, announced the golf tournament will purchase 150 megawatt hours of "green power" distributed by Palmetto Electric Cooperative and generated by state-owned Santee Cooper.
The power should be enough to match the amount of electricity used during the tournament by the Harbour Town clubhouse, hospitality areas, scoreboards, sky boxes and broadcasting towers, according to the foundation.
Santee Cooper generates electricity from renewable sources, including landfill biogas, and solar and wind power within South Carolina.
The RBC Heritage will purchase the "green" power from Palmetto Electric for this year's tournament, April 9-15 at Harbour Town Golf Links in Sea Pines, tournament director Steve Wilmot said.
In addition to purchasing "green" power from Palmetto Electric for this year's tournament -- to be played April 9-15 at Harbour Town Golf Links in Sea Pines -- the Heritage also will set up a "Green Power" booth on the 18th fairway to educate spectators about renewable energy.
"We are proud to say this is the fourth year we have used green energy," Wilmot said in a prepared statement. "As South Carolina's most significant sporting event, we believe it is the right thing to do. We love to say that our greens are green in more ways than one."
To offset the higher cost of producing green power, Santee Cooper customers and the state's electric cooperatives give customers the option of purchasing it with a 20-cents-a-day charge on their electric bills, according to the state-owned utility's website. Doing so has the effect of not driving a car for about three months and planting more than one-third of an acre of trees for a year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Palmetto Electric serves more than 67,000 consumers in southern Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton counties.
During tournament week, RBC, the Heritage Classic Foundation and Sea Pines Resort also will:
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