Told my home energy company I'm done with fossil fuels. Going 100% renewable.

[ffr]

Northern Nevada customers can now choose to go green by participating in the Northern NV Green Energy Choice.

The Northern NV Green Energy Choice* offers you the option of using 100 percent or 50 percent renewable energy by electing to pay an additional amount on your monthly bill (based on your usage). -NV Energy

Granted, it's only on the electricity side of my bill, since home heating is still provided through natural gas. But it's a start. And it's a start I'm willing to pay less for in the long run and more for in the short-term. Yes, I'll be paying upwards of 20% more for my electricity today, but it won't be at the cost of voting with my energy dollars to burn coal, with all of its residual eternal environmental pollution. I'm also on their variable (on/off peak) rate plan, which I predict, based on my current rate savings, will offset about half of the 20% rate increase. So be it!

* How will I know that the Northern NV Green Energy Choice is using renewable energy for Green Energy Choice customers like me? Each year (by April 1), the Company files a Compliance Report for all of its renewable energy efforts. As part of that filing, NV Energy will spell out how much renewable energy is purchased by customers in the new Green Energy Choice program. Electricity can only be called “renewable” by NV Energy if it is certified by the State of Nevada and meets the requirements of law, resulting in a portfolio credit (equal to one kilowatt-hour of electricity).

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I hope this option is better than the one we had in W PA.

We had a company called Green Mountain, which charged a premium as well, but had a lot of shady things come out. One of the things was that they rarely used green energy, stating that there was no way to generate enough energy without fossil fuels to provide for all of their customers.

This is a long article about that company, but it gives you information so you can watch out that this doesn't happen to your company.

http://grist.org/article/2010-11-23-how-green-is-green-mountain-energy/

The colorful history of Green Mountain’s ownership, though, stretches far back beyond NRG and BP. The company was founded in 1997 by Green Mountain Power, a Vermont utility, and Sam Wyly, a brash Texas billionaire who described himself to The New York Times as “a monomaniac with one goal: clean air from clean energy.”

Within three years, the company found itself in i
ts first skirmish with environmental activists, when Wyly — who was also a friend and major campaign contributor to George W. Bush — spent $2.5 million on ads praising then-Governor Bush’s environmental record. That year — 2000 — the Environmental Working Group called for a boycott of the company (The boycott was later withdrawn and an Environmental Working Group spokesman said the organization no longer has a position on Green Mountain.).

Wyly and his family eventually invested $100 million in Green Mountain over the years, though their stake in the company — including son Evan Wyly’s seat on the company’s board — came to an end with the NRG purchase.

The company, meanwhile, moved from Vermont to Austin, Texas just after the 2000 investment from BP — though it kept its name, which by then had evolved to GreenMountain.com.

[diane in sf]

5. Green Mountain was a TX Repubican, friends of bush, scam. I got a huge bill

from them when the Repugs were gaming the CA electrical market. Hundreds of dollars, when my normal use was about $40-60 a month. I dumped them like a hot potato and went back to the somewhat less regrettable PG&E.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. Yep, which is why I just wanted to put a warning up,

just in case this Nevada company is not what it appears either.

[lindysalsagal]

2. Mine’s all turbine and wind.

Feels good…

[awoke_in_2003]

3. I want to get solar panels next year...

but I will never give up the gas connection. Electric heaters and heat pumps both suck horribly.

[ffr]

4. Renewables have the backing of Harry Reid, if that tells you anything

How Harry Reid Delivered a 235-Mile-Long Power Line to Nevada - for renewable energy built across Nevada.

On Thursday (January 2014) Reid will attend the opening of the 235-mile line, which at the beginning of this year started carrying large amounts of electricity produced from renewable sources rather than coal, just as Reid envisioned seven years ago.

In at least three different instances, Reid ensured that federal legislation moved the project forward, including helping get a $343 million loan guarantee approved from the Energy Department's politically beleaguered program. Reid also brought to the negotiating table—sometimes reluctantly—two Nevada energy companies, NV Energy and LS Power, to make sure they worked together on the project after he had come out against their previous plans to build new coal-fired power plants. - NationalJournal.com

My primary purpose in signing up is to advocate for renewable energy, that there are people who choose to live their lives this way when given the choice and for utilities and politicians to take notice. Our democratic leaders are sticking their necks out for us, trying to do the right thing for our nation. And I am taking their backs in this small, but important way.

[Cha]

7. Good on you, ffr!

[nomorenomore08]

8. I live in CA where some PG&E plans now get something like 25% of their electricity

from "alternative" (non-fossil-fuel) sources...