Liberty's Blog: Whole Foods switching to all wind power in U.S.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Whole Foods switching to all wind power in U.S.

Whole foods announced That they are switching to all wind power in U.S.

The deal makes Whole Foods the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country.

Whole Foods will buy 458,000 megawatt-hours of the wind energy credits from Boulder, Colo.-based Renewable Choice Energy Inc. Neither company revealed the dollar value of the two-year contract.

"Right now, the main benefit is public relations," said Andrew Aulisi, senior associate at the nonprofit World Resources Institute. "For a company like Whole Foods, which has a particular kind of clientele, I can imagine this is an important way they relate to their customers."

Unlike slapping solar panels on a roof, buying green power credits does not mean that wind-generated electricity will power all Whole Foods' stores. Rather, the amount spent on the credits will pump more wind energy into the electric grid overall, reducing the amount of coal and natural gas used nationally.

"It's as if a city has been rendered green powered because of this (purchase) by Whole Foods," said Kurt Johnson, Green Power Partnership director at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Whole Foods had been using green power to support about 20 percent of its operations before the purchase.

Now I'm all for windpower ,its a great thing, but I don't understand how this all works. Lets see if I understand this right.

We get our electricity off something called a grid.
All the electric plants put the power on this same grid.
We don't really know where each individual Watt we use originates.
Wind turbines put all the electricity they make onto the grid. Wind farms generate all the power they can, and bill the grid for all the elelectricity they generate.
Companys like Green Mountain Energy charge about a $0.10 premium on every Kilowatt. Its all about Being enironmentaly friendly.

Affordable energy is a good idea, and many people might think its a good idea to perhaps pay a little more more for it. Its just that unlesss one actually generates the power that they actually use. A company that tells you that that the electricity they are selling you is somehow greener than what you are buying now sounds fraudulant to me. A company that sells organic and environmentally better food, that buys into this scheme is easily suckered in. How can one believe that the food that they buy is any different than anywhere else. Perhaps their grocerys as well as their foodstuffs are just more expencive.

1 Comments:

On 2/28/2008 03:36:00 PM, Anonymous said...: BEWARE of which green company you choose
Several years ago a Green Mountain Energy rep called me and convinced me to switch from the energy company I had been using for 20 years and never had a problem with over to them because of the "green" benefits at a lower rate. They said they had accessed my total usage for the past 12 months from the other company and averaged it out equally so I could have the same payment each month - no more high summer bills. Sounded great so I switched and all was fine (sort of)for a couple years. After getting frustrated with my bill arriving at inconsistent times each month, I switched to another. Then Green Mountain sent me a goodbye bill for over $3,000!!! Saying I used more than my allotment.
After going round and round over several months, a rep finally admitted the reason it happened was because Green Mt never came out to read my meter until after I switched, and apologized that it was negligence on their part because they were a new company and didn't have all the kinks worked out. I thought that was the end of it until several years later I received a call from a collection agency. This is beyond outrageous. I was a residential account with an average $400/month bill. What utility company would allow a customer to get over $3,000behind and never call, send a letter, or shut off their utilities - just continue billing and accepting payment of the same amount each month????
This company is frightening!
Robin Rosen, Sugar Land, Texas