Do You Know These Ways To Get wRECked in Decatur?

What Can I Do If I Can’t Put Solar on My Home, Live In An Apartment, or Still Use Fossil Gas for Heat?

In the vernacular, getting wrecked means getting extremely drunk or high. I don’t recommend this for anyone. Our children’s future is getting wrecked by fossil fuels. But let me tell you a story of another way of getting REC’d. Something I do recommend. A way to promote clean energy.

When I moved to Decatur four years ago, I helped support our first clean energy Solarize program. It was exciting. We added about 250 solar rooftops to the greater Decatur area. I had my residence evaluated for solar, and unfortunately, it had the wrong orientation and too much shade (helps cool).

I wound up doing the next best thing and started to reduce my energy use.

I had an energy efficiency company do an assessment with a blower door test and heat scanners, then insulated my ceilings and floors, put on low e storm windows, changed all my light bulbs to LEDs… and a dozen other things. Why?

The average American has a carbon footprint of 15 tons of CO2 per year. Try imagining 15 tons of anything in your living room. This is adding to our climate crisis. In addition to my energy efficiency efforts, I went from two cars to one car, reduced my car mileage by half, and took a pledge not to fly. But it still bugged me that the energy I did use was fossil fuel and contributed to global warming.

The question I asked myself was what can I do when I can’t go solar for my electricity? I found a strategy to support clean energy when you can’t do anything else. Enter the REC, a Renewable Energy Certificate, and also the Carbon Offset.

“RECs are tradable, non-tangible energy certificates in the United States that represent proof that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated from an eligible renewable energy resource and was fed into the shared system of power lines which transport energy (the grid).”

Whoa. If that sounds complicated, let me try it another way.

Since electricity in the grid comes from many different places and sources, there is traditionally no way to know exactly what energy source your electricity comes from. In Georgia, some of your electricity may come from nuclear, some from coal, some from burning fossil gas, and some from renewables. Electricity (electrons) are free to flow anywhere once they are in the grid. So you get a mix. It’s like pouring water into a canal system at several different spots. Water mixes and seeks its own level. So do electrons in a manner of speaking. A REC certifies that the electricity you are buying has been sourced through renewables someplace in the grid even though the electricity you get are mixed.

“Once a REC has been sold by a solar or wind farm, it cannot be purchased again. Each renewable energy credit has a unique number and includes information about where it was generated, what type of renewable source it came from, and the date it was generated. Additionally, the exchange of all RECs is tracked and recorded.”

So when you buy a REC you are encouraging and creating demand for renewable energy. You are helping put more renewables into our electric grid even if the actual electrons you use may be coming from someplace else. If everyone in Decatur who couldn’t put solar on their house did this, we could go 100% clean energy as soon as we wanted. This doesn’t mean that our whole grid is clean, but it helps.

There are many ways to buy RECs. One is through Georgia Power (Simple Solar). I got mine through Arcadia Power. Not everyone can afford RECs. They are sold at a slight premium over your current bill. My cost was 2-5% above my current electricity bill, but for me, it is worth it to support a transition to clean energy.

For RECS, consumers should make sure they are Green-e Certified. Green-e Certification makes sure your RECS aren’t double counted (e.g., the same wind farm sells their RECS to a corporation which counts it towards its carbon reduction goals and the utility counts the renewable energy towards meetings its renewable portfolio standard). Green-e also makes sure the renewable energy is generated from a relatively new facility (not more than 10-15 years old) Note: As a result of writing this post, I see that Arcadia is no longer Green-E certified, and I’m looking for an alternative. There are many. Here’s the Green-e resource page.

Then there is matter of consuming fossil gas to heat my home and water. For this, I turned to carbon offsets. Carbon Offsets work similar to RECs.

“A carbon offset is a certificate representing the reduction of one metric ton (2,205 lbs) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions, the principal cause of climate change. Although complex in practice, carbon offsets are fairly simple in theory. If you develop a project that reduces carbon dioxide emissions, every ton of emissions reduced results in the creation of one carbon offset. Project developers can then sell these offsets to help finance their projects.”

I figured out how much of that 15 tons of crap sitting in my living room came from heating my home and water as well as driving and bought carbon offsets. This cost me about $30 per month. There are many carbon offset companies, but the one I chose is Terrapass. They were started by students and professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg in 2004. Their projects range from methane capture to forestry to renewables. All thoroughly verified and engineered. They have a good projects page where you can get an idea.

One last caveat. For carbon offsets or RECs, I’d recommend selecting a company that supports solar and wind rather than biomass, or one that is trying to greenwash their fossil gas.

Neither RECs or Carbon Offsets change the actual carbon energy I use to zero. Some say that they are a form of virtue signaling for well-to-do people. But they are a choice I made until I can convert my heating from fossil gas and buy my energy directly from a local renewable source. The cost is small and I believe they are worth it.

Meanwhile, let’s work like heck to get our city and our state off our fossil fuel addiction. We need city action and massive collective action too.