How Does it Work?
Residents and businesses in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Pennsylvania can choose their electric supplier (you are not obligated to stay with your utility for electric supply). This is because of electricity deregulation.
Electricity deregulation can be best described through a metaphor. Consider our national electric grid as a big pot of soup. There are multiple ingredients that go into a soup – but once blended it can be difficult (if not impossible) to tell each ingredient apart from the others.
In the case of our national electric grid, different sources of electricity would be the different ingredients for the soup – carbon fuels like coal and natural gas, hydro power, nuclear, and renewable energy like wind power and solar power. At the moment, the vast majority of our national electric grid is powered by carbon fuels. Once an electron is placed onto the grid, it becomes essentially impossible to trace where it came from (electricity is electricity). However, the source of where that electron was produced is very important! (Click here to learn about electricity deregulation)
Since electricity generation is the single largest source of heat-trapping carbon emissions, it is important that regionally, nationally, and globally, we decrease the share of electricity that is produced from burning carbon fuels and increase the share of electricity produced by clean, renewable energy like wind power. One of the most effective ways you can do so is by switching the source of electricity at your home to Clean Currents wind power.
Choosing Clean Currents wind power does not mean that your electricity is coming directly from wind farms — it is impossible to direct any specific electron that travels through the electric grid to a specific destination. However, it does mean that the electricity being placed onto the grid on your home’s behalf comes from pollution-free renewable wind power, rather than from polluting, CO2 emitting generation sources like coal or natural gas.
Here’s how: Clean Currents purchases electricity to serve our customers’ minute-by-minute power needs AND we ensure that enough clean wind energy is produced through the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) to match our customers’ usage. RECs represent the environmental attributes of renewable electricity generation.
By switching to Clean Currents wind power, you are supporting renewable electricity production both locally and nationwide. You will continue to receive an electricity bill from your local utility (ex: Pepco, BGE, PPL, PECO).