'Green Club' lets NPPD customers vote with checkbook

Are Nebraska "tree huggers" getting a chance to put their money where their mouth is, or did NPPD make a meaningless gesture when it announced that that customers could voluntarily pay a "green" surcharge?

Nebraska Public Power District directors approved a "Retail Green Club" which allows retail customers who believe in the use of renewable energy to specify the amount of their monthly energy usage they want to come from renewable sources.

They can buy 100 kilowatt hours of green energy for $1.80 plus tax and bill adjustments, representing NPPD's additional cost to generage green energy.

For the average Nebraska home using about 1,000 kwh of electricity per month, buying three blocks of green energy would add $5.40 plus sales tax and bill adjustments to the current bill.

However, an Associated Press story points out that the source of the customer's energy won't change, and the money will go into NPPD's general budget, where it may or may not be used for renewable energy.

NPPD is sticking to its overall goal of generating 10 percent of its electricity with renewable energy, primarily wind, by 2020, a stance that has drawn criticism from environmental and some farm groups that would like to see more.

"We'd like to see something that really changes the energy mix, as opposed to something that just changes a customer's bill," said Ken Winston, the Nebraksa Sierra Club's policy advocate.

Many other utilities have similar programs, but they usually reserve the money for wind or solar.

Even the Omaha Public Power District and Lincoln Electric System have been more aggressive about adding green energy, critics say.

But NPPD did reach an agreement this week with Becton Dickinson and Co., a medical technology company to purchase renewable energy credits from NextEra Energy Resources' Steele Flats Wind Farm for the next 20 years. The 75-megawatt Steele Flats Wind Farm began commercial operation earlier this month as the latest addition to NPPD's energy portfolio.

And, John Hansen, the co-chair of the sixth annual Nebraska Wind Conference, told an audience on Wednesday that the state will add 750 megawatts over the next two years, nearly tripling Nebraska's wind energy capacity.

Anyone who's spent time in the loess hills of Southwest Nebraska knows there's no shortage of wind power here that's mostly going to waste, and we agree with those who would like to see it better utilized.

But we don't enjoy paying more for electricity than we have to, and NPPD has done a good job of holding those costs down, mostly through coal power that is threatened by expensive environmental regulations.

NPPD's new green surcharge does, at least, allow those who fervently believe in renewable energy to vote with their checkbooks.