Austin Energy Tops Nationally for Green Sales

Published May 5, 2010 at 11:04 a.m.

2009 was a great year for the City of Austin's green energy initiatives...Earlier this week, Austin Energy announced that in the past year -- and for the past eight years -- Austin has led the nation in voluntary renewable energy sales (according to rankings by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

Rohan8/flickr

The key has been Austin Energy's GreenChoice® program, which lets consumers opt into having their energy needs met through a portfolio of renewable sources like wind and bio-energy...There are currently about 480 commercial customers and 9,750 residential customers in the program...Commercial customers -- like Whole Foods Market, Dell Inc., and Cisco Systems, Inc. -- make up about 84% of the program's purchases.

"[W]e are proud that Austin Energy's GreenChoice® program leads the nation in showing that customers who want to manage costs and reduce emissions can make a difference in the way electricity is made," stated Karl R. Rábago, Austin Energy's vice president for distributed energy services...It's too bad we don't crack the top ten in customer participation (Palo Alto Utilities is #1 on that list).

Still, Austinites purchased about 764.8 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy through GreenChoice®, outperforming the more than 850 other green power programs in the nation...For perspective, that same amount of energy could power the homes of about 60,000 residential customers for one year.

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