[HCoop-Discuss] EnvironmentalPolicy

[Nathan Kennedy]

Aaron Hsu wrote:
> If someone could point me to some of the resources that might give me 
> some more detailed information about where these organizations spend 
> their money, I would be able to more quickly assess my personal 
> opinion about this action. I do like the idea of a private 
> organization or co-op like ourselves funding a project to assist in 
> private companies building and creating cleaner energy plants, etc. I 
> do not like the idea of an organization llike ours providing funds to 
> a company or organization which also spends these funds, not only on 
> private action, but political lobbying to impel government to action, 
> usually in the form of regulation and legislation. So long as these 
> organizations are strictly operating only in the private sector, I'm 
> okay; if these organizations attempt to achieve their ends through 
> government intervention, however, I would like to express my strong 
> opposition.
Hi Aaron,
I was suggesting wind energy certificates from NativeEnergy.  You can 
find very detailed information at their website at 
http://www.nativeenergy.com/ as well as elsewhere on the web, as they 
are one of the larger North American marketers of RECs.
NativeEnergy is majority-owned by the Intertribal Council on Utility 
Policy, which in turn is a nonprofit alliance of 11 Plains tribal 
governments dealing with energy issues.  Their main project is 
constructing a medium-sized wind farm on an Oglala Souix reservation.

NativeEnergy also markets credits from biomass, such as methane from 
dairy farms in Pennsylvania, but I am not interested in those.


Here's another simplified overview of how RECs work for wind power, for 
Adam's benefit.  A wind farm produces electricity, and sells it to the 
Grid.  In other words it contracts with a local utility company to buy 
its power to resell to customers.  Since wind power is more expensive to 
generate than market-rate dirty electricity (from coal and such), this 
is a money-losing venture and no new wind farms would be built and those 
in existence would go bankrupt.
An alternative is to sell the electricity not just as power, but as Wind 
Power.  If the utility company's customers are willing to pay a premium 
for this, it may pay a premium for Wind Power from its customers, 
keeping the wind farm running.  But this is limited by the willingness 
of power consumers who are clients of utility companies that buy from 
the wind farm, in other words, hippies on the local power grid.

As an alternative, the wind farm can sell some of its electricity just 
as Power at the market rate per KW/h, and then for each KW/h thus sold, 
also sell a wind credit on the REC marketplace.  People like us who 
can't buy wind power directly can then purchase these.  This increases 
the profitability of the wind farm, and since credits can only be sold 
once per KW/h, it encourages existing wind farms to stay in business and 
expand so that they can sell more RECs, new players to enter the 
business and build new wind farms, and encourages R&D spending on wind 
to make it cheaper and more profitable.

The same goes for other renewable power and carbon-offsetting projects.

-ntk