Get With Pepsi. Rack Up Some RECs

A couple of years ago we signed up for the Connecticut Clean Energy Options program, which allows customers to "buy" up to 100 percent of their electricity from clean energy sources (in our case mostly from wind farms in the mid-Atlantic region). We're not actually getting our power directly from the wind generators; we get it from our provider, Connecticut Light & Power, through the regular electrical grid. However, the clean energy we pay for through CL&P directly offsets energy that would have been generated by traditional sources like oil, coal, and nuclear power. There's a small monthly surcharge for customers who opt in for this program. (In a logical policy world, a policy world with guts and brains, there would be a small incentive break instead.) Still, for the average customer the surcharge amounts to about $4.00 per month for a 50-percent involvement, and $8.00 if you choose 100 percent, which we chose. We haven't noticed much of a difference in our bills, maybe because we've become so careful with electricity that we've negated the $8.00 surcharge.

This program in Connecticut is part of the larger world of RECs, short for Renewable Energy Credits or Renewable Energy Certificates, depending on who's in charge of acronyms. Here's the Wikipedia explanation of RECs.

All this is by way of mentioning PepsiCo's recent purchase of 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours of RECs per year for the next three years. The news is a month old, but deserves constant replay, because this is the kind of big-player move that will save America. The purchase is equivalent to all the grid-supplied electricity used by Pepsi's US operations -- enough electricity to power 90,000 average homes. Here's the press release from the U.S. DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy website.

Wouldn't it be outstanding if all the country's major corporations followed suit, and inspired all the medium-sized companies, and then the small companies, to go for RECs? That would give the renewable movement huge momentum, and put a good-sized dent in OPEC.

If you own a business, or have the ear of the people who run the place where you work, push for RECs. For more information, visit the EPA's Green Power Partnership. If you check the partnership list on that site, you can see you'll be in great company. The 735 partners currently listed there account for 9 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy per year.

If you're already familiar with the concept of RECs, you may be wondering who certifies and monitors the organizations who are applying for and selling RECs. Good question. It appears that the Green-e Program, administered by the national non-profit Center for Resource Solutions, is the trusted broker both for Connecticut Clean Energy Options and the PepsiCo commitment.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

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Pepsi is a horrible product and if they really cared about the enviroment they would stop making that horrid product