Another Corporate Commitment

August 2nd, 2006 by Vihar Sheth
Posted in Energy, Environment, News, Responsibility

Heightening Awareness: Earlier in 2006 Whole Foods Markets made a commitment to buy all of its energy from wind generated facilities, making a resounding statement for corporate responsibility. A second major company made a huge commitment to renewable energy recently. Vail Resorts announced on August 1st, 2006 that would buy enough energy credits to offset all the power needs for its facilities, which include resorts, retail stores and office buildings. That the American people will not get support from the Bush administration on energy issues becomes more and more evident each day. Companies are realizing that the private sector must lead the way if there is to be meaningful change. An article in the New York Times offers the following on how the company will actually use wind-generated energy to offset its energy use and why doing so is important:

Buying wind, though, will not mean building mountain windmills. Rather, Vail officials said they would buy the equivalent amount of their energy needs in wind power credits from a Boulder company called Renewable Choice Energy. Renewable Choice will then buy wind power from producers — mainly in Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota — and inject the amount of power Vail uses into the national electric grid.
Company officials would not estimate the program’s cost, but said that total energy use was about 152,000 megawatt hours a year — about as much as is used by 14,000 average homes. The company said it would also create a promotional incentive plan to encourage employees and visitors to convert to wind power at home, with a free day ski pass to anyone who signed up.
The idea of wind power credits, said the chief executive and founder of Renewable Choice Energy, Quayle Hodek, is to displace fossil fuel generation nationally, if not quite locally. The day-to-day supply for Vail’s chairlifts, lights and machinery will still be generated as it is now by local suppliers. In Colorado, that means mostly coal-fired generation. Similarly, visitors to a Vail resort who sign up for wind power would not change utility providers either. Rather they would pay $15 a month for a family, or $5 for an individual, to Mr. Hodek’s company to buy credits for the amount of wind used by their household, which would then be fed into the national grid. The buyer would pay the same old electric bill as before, just as Vail will do here in Colorado.

The State of Colorado is also making some noise.

Colorado voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution in 2004 that requires big utility companies to provide 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources, especially wind, by 2015. The amendment requires much new production to be within the state’s borders.
Jake Meffley, an energy advocate at Environment Colorado, a conservation group based in Denver, said the Vail plan “says to the economy that people are interested in renewal.” It did not matter, Mr. Meffley said, that the increased wind production from the deal, or the decreased burning of coal, might not occur in Colorado. “For the greater good it doesn’t matter where it comes from,” he said.

Promoting Action: Support alternative energy companies by buying credits to offset your energy use. While wind is a popular option, energy generated from solar, water, geothermal, biomass and natural gas sources is also available. The brilliance of the system is that energy produced in an environmentally friendly manner is pooled with energy produced in a traditional manner, so even if you live in Cloudy City, USA you can get your energy from the sun!

Just a few of the companies that offer energy credits for homes and businesses:

green | rising