Green Tip of the Week: Clean Power Choice

The following tip was provided by the Go Green Galloway Task Force for Sustainability:

Wouldn't it be something if you could consume electricity and not cause any pollution at all?  In New Jersey, there's a way to do that, even without installing solar panels on your house or a big windmill on the lawn.  Electric customers here can volunteer for the CleanPower Choice program, which guarantees that their share of electricity comes from wind, solar, small hydroelectric, or landfill gas, rather than polluting fossil fuels.

How does the program work? Think of the electric grid your utility draws power from as a large pond.  If you sign up for clean power, the share of the electricity that goes into the pond to service your house will be guaranteed to come from non-polluting sources.  Nothing else changes: your local utility provides any needed service, and you still get only one bill. 

Clean power costs a bit more than polluting power (although the gap is steadily closing).  That means you’ll pay nominally more – perhaps 10 percent, depending on the style of clean power you choose.  But you'll have the satisfaction of eliminating as many as 10,000 tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions from your household.  And if you haven't already done so, you can more than recover the modest extra cost by taking a few simple steps toward energy efficiency, such as switching to LED or compact fluorescent lightbulbs. 

To learn more, go to the CleanPower Choice website at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, here: www.njcleanenergy.com and search “clean power choice” or learn more by calling 1-866-NJSMART.

This tip is courtesy of the Task Force for a Sustainable Galloway.

For more information, call the Galloway Township Department of Community Education at 652-3700 ext. 209 or email bfiedler@gallowaytwp-nj.gov