Good Energy is pleased to be a co-convener of the Sustainable Jersey Sustainability Summit on September 18, 2013 at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ. Gary Fogelman, Mass Markets Manager of Good Energy will be there to answer your questions. In the blog post below, Mr. Fogelman explains how Government Energy Aggregation can be a powerful use of helping communities go Green. He further explains how many communities in Illinois, where the program is called Municipal Aggregation, decided on a Green option when choosing their winning electric supplier. This cost in savings was less than $10 per Green community resident thus making this decision a very easy one.
When thinking about Government Energy Aggregation (“GEA”) , we often tend to jump straight for the intended endpoint - focusing on the municipally-organized bulk buying power of energy which will save residents money. In many cases, however, communities see these purchases as opportunities to do more and actually practice “community”. These choices are made by government leaders with invaluable input from residents. One of these choices is whether or not an energy purchase may include renewable components, i.e., Renewable Energy Certificates (“REC”). The EPA describes a REC as a certificate that represents the generation of one megawatt-hour (“MWh”) of electricity from an eligible source of renewable energy. Each REC denotes the underlying generation energy source, location of the generation, and year of generation (a.k.a. “vintage”), environmental emissions, and other characteristics associated with the generator. RECs represent a claim to the environmental attributes associated with renewable energy generation. Because the REC is a publicly traded commodity just as the underlying energy commodity is, it is equally subject to the market forces that will put downward pressure on prices when purchased on a large scale created by an aggregation program.
The point to be made is that GEA provides a unique and powerful tool in New Jersey, not just to reduce supply costs for account holders, but to increase, if not initiate renewable energy use over and above state-mandated Renewable Portfolio Standards (“RPS”). Good Energy is a pioneer in GEA, building and currently managing a program in Illinois (known as “Municipal Energy Aggregation” in IL) that offset approximately four BILLION kWh using bundled RECs. We believe this to be the largest residential aggregation in the entire country. The annual environmental impacts of the energy procurements that make up this program are nothing more than astounding - more than 5.5 BILLION lbs of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, nearly 550,000 cars taken off the road, more than two million trees spared, and the CO2 emissions of almost 325,000 electricity use avoided.
Government Energy Aggregation, uniting bulk energy purchasing with community by using Renewable Energy, helping keep Jersey sustainable!
For more information about how your community can become Sustainable Jersey Certified, click here or the image below...
