Microsoft has bought enough clean energy to get on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s list of top-50 largest clean-energy users.

This is the first time the company has been included on the list, where right away it placed third after Intel and Kohl.

Blaine Collison, director of the EPA’s Green Power Partnership program, said, “EPA is excited to welcome Microsoft as a Green Power Partner and congratulates the company on its number-three ranking on our Top 50 list of green organizations.”

Microsoft used 1.12bn kWh of clean energy over the past 12 months, according to the EPA. Comprising of biomass, hydro and wind energy, this makes for 46% of its total energy needs for the period.

The company earned its place on the list largely by purchasing renewable-energy credits (REC’s) from Sterling Planet, an organization specializing in helping corporations reduce their impact on the environment.

Sterling Planet has also supplied RECs to Intel and Kohl, the two companies at the top of the EPA’s list.

Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist Robert Bernard announced earlier this month that the company had reached its goal to reduce carbon emissions by at least 30% per unity of revenue below its 2007 baseline.

The company achieved this through a combination of energy-efficiency improvements and investment in carbon-reduction projects, such as REC purchases.

A lot of the total power consumed by Microsoft goes to its data centers, and it has been one of the most progressive companies in terms of innovative data center design. Earlier this month, its Global Foundation Services team revealed its vision of a Data Plant – a data center that generates its own power using biogas as fuel.

In a recent report on the impact of large and most famous tech companies’ data center operations’ impact on the environment, Greenpeace said Microsoft could do better in using its buying power and resources to buy more renewable energy for its growing cloud business.

The company has declined to comment on the environmentalist organization’s assessment of its sustainability practices.