REC’s
Purchase REC’s from CCWC turbines:
ONLINE REC ORDER FORM
What are renewable energy credits (RECs) or ‘green tags’?
This link is a great description of renewable energy credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags. Renewable energy credits are the way the ‘renewableness of the energy is tracked. Since there is no way to distinguish green electrons from brown ones, renewable energy projects are assigned a unique ‘Renewable Energy Credit’ (REC) for every megawatt-hour they produce. Those RECs can be included as a part of a project’s power sales contract or sold to someone else. When a REC is retired the renewable power has been used, even if the REC accounting and the electrons took very different paths. In most green power programs you are actually retiring RECs not buying them otherwise you would just be a renewable energy middleman and not its consumer. Most RECs end up being used to satisfy a utility’s green power requirements, some are used by residences that ‘check the box’ and pay extra to have renewable power, and some are sold to events that want to advertise as being renewably powered. RECs in some sense are the bragging rights associated with renewable energy. All the soft benefits of renewable energy, beyond the electricity itself, are wrapped up in the REC, including carbon offsets, pollution reduction, self-sufficiency, national security, etc. RECs associated with a community project have the additional attributes of stimulating the local economy, supporting distributed generation, and strengthening community pride.
REC’s from a CCWC project are especially valuable in that you know exactly where they are coming from and that all the purchase price went to supporting that project. CCWC also ensures that RECs from its projects have what is called ‘additionality’. Additionality means that buying those RECs went directly to funding new renewable generation. Many REC’s that are bundled in utility green power programs come from existing projects that would have been built anyway; so what good did paying that extra money do? Also the money spend on utility program RECs often goes primarily to funding the bureaucracy of running the utility REC program and only a fraction ends up with the generator. For instance PSE recently decreased the price of their RECs to $12.50 per megawatt hour, still slightly more than half of that does not end up with the renewable generator. This is an improvement from the $40 per megawatt hour they used to charge and only 1/7th of that ended up with the renewable energy projects (that most likely would have been built anyway). So when you join a utility green power program you are mostly paying for them to have a green power program and not so much paying for the green power itself.
There are three ways to get CCWC RECs
A virtual net metering subscription includes the REC’s you are being renewably powered with a virtual net metering subscription
You can also get a REC subscription from CCWC for the price of a VNM subscription. You don’t save money on your power bill but will get quarterly updates on how much green energy was produced from your subscription. This is a great solution for those who don’t pay their own power bill, or who want to offset a non electrical energy use such as heating or driving, or are on a budget and want to use the power from our projects without the upfront payment of a full subscription.
Any RECs not subscribed to before turbine completion will be sold in bundles for $40 per megawatt hour as they are produced. Great for greening events. All proceeds will be used by the turbine owners to make loans to help start new projects.
You can see in all three instances your REC purchase goes 100 percent to creating a new renewable energy generator that would not exist without your purchases.
