PGE green energy thang?

[funflower]

I got something in the mail today about an option to pay a little extra to purchase "clean" energy from PGE. Anybody have any info on how legit this is? I'm happy to pay extra for alternative energy sources if this is the real thing.

[bridgit]

1. was it in your pg&e statement?

cause smud has several such plans in place here in sac that do work; but groups are coalescing to remove pg&e from their grids. i'd check it further; may be a response to activity along these lines = better these days to be seen as green

http://www.greenaction.org/hunterspoint/pr050102.shtml

http://www.local.org/independ.html

[HuckleB]

2. PGE and PG&E are different entities.

[funflower]

3. It was a separate mailing

I think this PGE stands for Portland General Electric. It sounds positive; I'm just not very sophisticated about the whole clean energy biz.

[0rganism]

4. I'm not convinced.

Once the energy -- chemical, solar, wind, hydro, whatever -- is converted into electricity by the generator, it gets to be quite a trick telling one jumpy electron on a wire apart from any other. If you pull your house power from PGE's anonymous substation along with everyone else in your neighborhood, it's not like you get to pick which transformer they tap for your particular residence.

So what you're really doing is giving them extra money which, allegedly, is used to fund "clean" energy research and production. I'd expect that the energy is generated in the cheapest and most efficient manner possible, regardless of what you pay for it and what the company does with your donation. Remember who we're dealing with. At no point would I trust the Enronians with any more money that that to which they are entitled by the PUC.

[funflower]

5. That's what I'm worried about

The flyer says you aren't assuring "clean" energy for your own house but that your "subsidy" will pull an amount of clean energy equal to what you use for the system in general. In theory, if everyone chose the "clean" option, all the energy in the system would be "clean."

I don't know whether it's like buying organic groceries or just, as you say, handing over extra money to the Enronians.