The Grassroots are Greener:
A Community-Based Approach to Marketing Green Power
Message from the Staff of REPP
What works?
Across the country, today's electric companies, regulators, renewable energy businesses and environmental advocates are struggling to make sense of a changing electricity sector. In some states, customers can now select an electricity provider — including one selling "green" power — much as they designate a long-distance telephone company. In other states, regulators allow monopoly utilities to offer customers a green power option at a premium price. Driven by business logic and ideological fervor, change seems irresistible.
Amidst the confusion, corporate and public decision makers seeking to promote renewables scratch their heads, asking "what works"? As competitive markets restructure the once-staid electricity sector, can we preserve the modest gains made in renewable energy development during the era of rate regulation? More alluring, can we use market mechanisms to tap directly into the huge latent public support for clean energy? What is the best way to explore the possibilities?
We do not believe that America faces a choice between public policy and markets: any plausible future will be a hybrid, integrating both types of mechanisms. We believe that environmental protection requires, above all, an informed constituency willing both to vote green and to buy green. Indeed, the chief attraction, to us, of emerging markets for green power is the role that they will play in building that constituency: in educating and informing Americans about the environmental impact of energy use, the links between energy-related pollution and health, and the role that renewables can play in environmental preservation. For these reasons, we look to green markets with cautious hope.
Yet restructuring holds both danger and promise for renewables. In the face of that uncertainty, reasonable people justifiably disagree over how to proceed. At this moment, we require above all new ideas: creative strategies, fresh skills, innovative relationships. We need to know which new models work; why they work; and whether they would work in other contexts.
This paper is the latest in a series of REPP case studies describing attempts to fit renewable energy into new market conditions. Earlier releases in this vein include Cooperative Wind: How Co-ops and Advocates Expanded Wind Power in Minnesota, by Michael Tennis, Paul Jefferiss and Steve Clemmer, and Green Power for Business: Good News from Traverse City by Ed Holt. The former paper describes a partnership between rural electric cooperatives, renewable energy advocates and environmental groups to develop and market wind-generated electricity. The latter report describes participation by small businesses in Traverse City Light & Power's green pricing program. Future REPP case studies will include a release in Fall of 1999, describing experience in incorporating renewable and efficiency in public and private housing. As a group, these papers comprise a set of new strategies, some of which may be reproducible across the country.
Adam Serchuk, Research Director and Executive Editor of the Issue Brief series
Mary Kathryn Campbell, Publications and Outreach Manager
J. Bernard Moore, Research Associate
Roby Roberts, Executive Director
Virinder Singh, Research Associate
June 3, 1999
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