June 12, 2013

NREL Highlights 2012 Utility Green Power Leaders

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on June 5 released its assessment of leading utility green power programs. Under these voluntary programs, residential and commercial consumers can choose to help support additional electricity production from renewable resources such as wind and solar power.

Using information provided by utilities, NREL has developed "Top 10" rankings of utility green power programs for 2012 in the following categories: total sales of renewable energy to program participants; total number of customer participants; the percentage of customer participation; green power sales as a percentage of total utility retail electricity sales; and the lowest price premium charged for a green power program using new renewable resources. The top 10 programs support more than 4.2 million megawatt hours per year of voluntary green power.

Ranked by renewable energy sales in terms of megawatt-hours per year, Portland General Electric (Oregon) overtook Austin Energy (Texas) in 2012, selling the largest amount of renewable energy in the nation through its voluntary green power program. In addition, Dominion Virginia Power and Oklahoma Gas & Electric are new to the top renewable energy sales list. Ranked by the percentage of customer participation, the top utilities are City of Palo Alto Utilities (California), followed by Portland General Electric, Madison Gas and Electric Company (Wisconsin), Sacramento Municipal Utility District (California), the City of Naperville (Illinois), and Pacific Power (Oregon). In addition, six utilities provided green power supply that included at least 2% solar. See the NREL press release and the Green Power website.