From Bill Hayes:
- Purchase renewable electricity, or green power, from your electricity supplier.
Most commercial and residential electricity customers in Illinois can choose an electricity provider that supplies 100% green power. Residential customers can find information about these providers at www.pluginIllinois.org.
Suppliers of green power are really providing a bundle of 2 products: electricity that can be used to power appliances and a matching quantity of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), which makes the electricity “green”. RECs are the mechanism by which renewable electricity is tracked in the US electricity market. A REC is a tradable instrument created when a megawatt-hour (MWh) of renewable electricity is delivered to the US grid to meet consumer demand for electricity. A REC conveys the legal property right to the “environmental benefits” of that renewable supply, and it tracks those benefits, separately from the electricity itself, from generation to the final user. In short, consumers use RECs to substantiate their use and ownership of electricity from renewable resources and to reduce their emissions footprint.
- Purchase RECs separately from your electricity supplier.
This can take a variety of forms, but the essential element is that RECs are acquired from a vendor other than your regular electricity supplier. For instance, this can be done simply by purchasing RECs directly from a REC broker on an annual basis to match the quantity of annual electricity purchased from your regular electricity supplier. Like option 1 above, the final owner of REC’s has the legal right to “use” the renewable part of the generation and to reduce their emissions footprint according to global standards. REC’s that have been certified by industry standard Green-e are available from a number of suppliers such as 3Degrees, Terrapass, and Renewable Choice Energy.
- Generate renewable electricity from owned facilities (i.e.; rooftop solar) and keep the RECs.
You can install solar or other renewable generation and directly reduce your consumption of energy from ComEd, along with the fossil fuels and carbon emissions used to generate the electricity in the grid. However, if you create and sell RECs from this owned generation, then you will no longer be legally “using” the renewable part of the electricity nor reducing your carbon footprint. Rather, the RECs will be used by the buyer, most likely to satisfy requirements under the Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).
Note: These are the 3 ways to INCREASE renewable electricity use beyond the amounts mandated under Illinois’ RPS. Under this mandate, RECs equal to 14.5% of the electricity service area will be purchased/retired in 2018. Additional info can be found in the EPA’s Guide for Purchasing Green Power.
