Documenting Trends in Energy Use and Environmental Practices on US Golf Courses

Since an initial 2008 survey that documented energy use and environmental practices on US golf courses, there has been an 8.3% decrease in annual energy use on 18-hole facilities, from 2623 million Btu (MMBtu) per facility in 2008 to 2405 MMBtu in 2015. This decrease was primarily the result of reduced consumption of electricity since 2008, including adoption of behavioral and physical or design features for the purpose of energy conservation, increased use of onsite solar panels, adoption of written energy plans, and use of energy audits. From 2008 to 2015, there was a small increase (2.2%) in diesel fuel use, but little change in the use of all other energy sources including gasoline, natural gas, propane, and heating oil on 18-hole facilities. There was a 7.8% decrease in overall energy use in the golf course industry as a whole, which came about as a result of behavioral changes in energy consumption (accounting for 39% of the decrease) and the reduced number of golf facilities in the United States since 2008 (accounting for 61% of the decrease). Future energy conservation efforts should be focused on electricity and fuel use, especially in golf maintenance activities, increased use of alternative energy sources, hybrid vehicles, reduced maintained acreage, and regular energy audits on which energy conservation plans can be based. E use and environmental practices on US golf courses were documented for the first time in a 2008 survey conducted by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA, Lawrence, KS) (Lyman et al., 2012a). Part of a larger effort known as the GCSAA Golf Course Environmental Profile, this survey was one of five national surveys conducted between 2006 and 2009, with the objective of developing a comprehensive environmental profile of golf courses in the United States (Lyman et al., 2007, 2012a, 2012b; Throssell et al., 2009a, 2009b). In 2016, a follow-up survey was conducted through the Environmental Institute for Golf (Lawrence, KS) and funded by the US Golf Association (Far Hills, NJ) to gain updated data on energy use. The objectives of this second phase were to compare results from the 2016 survey with those from the initial survey, in an attempt to characterize and/or quantify trends in use of energy sources such as gas, diesel, electricity, propane, natural gas, and heating oil, as well as participation in energy conservation programs on US golf courses. Published in Crop Forage Turfgrass Manage. Volume 3. doi:10.2134/cftm2017.07.0044 © 2017 American Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison, WI 53711 This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Published online November 22, 2017