Marin Voice: Marin Clean Energy is the greenest choice

If you’re reading this, you live in one of the few places in California that has decided to bring clean energy to its residents by managing its own power. Since 2010, Marin Clean Energy has provided Marin residents and businesses the option to have a cleaner mix of energy than they were otherwise getting.

By contracting with alternative energy suppliers for both renewable and non-renewable power, MCE provides a cleaner mix by default, and also offers a voluntary option called Deep Green that gives subscribers 100 percent renewable electricity from several wind facilities in the West.

While the idea is simple, how it works is complicated.

Electricity is fed onto the common grid, and clean energy is accounted for through contracts and renewable energy certificates that confer the “renewableness” of that energy. It needs to work this way because individual electrons can’t be routed from the wind turbine to a particular house that just signed up for green power. . . .

http://www.marinij.com/opinion/ci_25930386/marin-voice-marin-clean-energy-is-greenest-choice