One of Mercer Island’s biggest consumers of electricity and natural gas is going green and joining thousands of Puget Sound Energy customers in reducing its carbon footprint.

Mercer Island Country Club, which is a swim, fitness and tennis facility with 841 member families, has signed up for the utility’s Green Power and Carbon Balance programs to mitigate the club’s overall environmental impact.

The club’s emissions from electricity and gas average about 700 tons each year, the equivalent of 50 average-sized Mercer Island homes. Participating in the two PSE programs will allow the club to offset almost all its electricity- and gas-related emissions. By purchasing green power, MICC’s emissions from electricity usage will drop to nearly zero. Likewise, emissions from gas usage will be offset by the Carbon Balance purchase.

The campaign to enroll MICC in the PSE programs started in early 2021, when club member Yogi Agrawal pitched the idea to the club’s board president and recruited other club members to advocate for the cause. Agrawal determined that the programs were one of the quickest ways for the club to mitigate its environmental impact, and he helped sign the club up in coordination with PSE.

This is not the only step the club has taken to go green, according to Alex Banbury, chairman of the sustainability committee set up by the board in June 2021.

“Before enrolling in the PSE programs, the board and committee prioritized making sustainability changes at MICC to directly reduce the club’s environmental impact,” Banbury said.

Over the past several months, General Manager Dorrinda Pierce, the staff, and board have made changes in club operations that are expected to save energy as well as money. As a first step, committee members Alex Banbury, Yogi Agrawal, Jonathan Harrington and Kathy Bremner analyzed the club’s electricity and gas bills for the past five years, keeping in mind the pandemic’s effects on club usage.

The committee’s efforts have so far led to the club lowering thermostats at night when the club is closed and the installation of LED lighting in the parking lot. Some items already put into effect are no- to low-cost, such as encouraging online billing and more efficient composting of food waste.

Signing on to PSE’s two programs is the biggest move toward greenness so far for MICC, according to Mike Gage, 2021 board president. He noted that the club is far from alone.

More than 66,000 PSE residential and business customers are currently participating in the 20-year-old Green Power program. The Carbon Balance program started in 2011 and has 24,000 participating customers. PSE has about 1.1 million electric customers and more than 900,000 gas customers in 10 Washington counties, according to Leslie Myers, PSE product manager for voluntary renewables.

“We’re eager to keep finding ways our club can help preserve our planet,” Pierce said. “We hope other facilities like MICC will join us.”

For more information, please contact Dorrinda Pierce at 206-232-5600 or Kathy Bremner at 206-236-2326.