Thursday, March 5, 2009

Blue Sky

We received a "2008 Blue Sky" report from Pacific Power. If you haven't heard of it, Blue Sky is our local program for supporting renewable energy. We pay a small premium to ensure that we support using Green-e Energy certified renewable energy. Below is text taken directly from a letter from Pacific Power.

Our details:
"Our total 2008 Blue Sky purchase of 12,833 Kilowatt-hours of renewable energy avoided the release of 15,548 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions into the air. This represents environmental benefits equivalent to not driving 15,767 miles. I believe this cost us $100.00."

Blue Sky details:
"67,000 Blue Sky customers supported 490 million kilowatt-hours of Green-e Energy certified renewable energy. That is equal to the output of 107 wind turbines. "

Do you support renewable energy?

2 comments:

Christopher Russell said...

Kudos for embracing clean power! I wish that clean power could meet all our needs, but we're not there yet. Fossil fuels and nuclear will still be part of our future (and our kid's future). As you know, I'm an advocate for energy efficiency, a potential that has yet to be fully tapped, much less understood. As they say, the cleanest and cheapest kilowatt-hour is the one you DON'T use. I am very excited about energy efficiency resource standards-- a regulatory structure that requires utilities to work with their consumers to reduce energy waste. I should probably stop here before I get too wonky, but more info is at http://ase.org/content/article/detail/5562

Kim Skildum-Reid said...

My business and our family pay to plant trees from carbonneutral.com.au. We plant around 700-750 trees a year in an area where erosion and rising salinity is threatening the environment as well - a big problem in Australia, caused by overclearing decades ago. It costs me about AU $1700 a year.

We also use 100% renewable energy - hydro, geothermal, and wind - from our power company, Origin Energy. It costs about 10% more than the normal, coal-fired power and well worth it.