Green Mountain Power, a Colchester, Vt.-based electric utility, has launched its choose2bgreen program, which provides customers with a mechanism to neutralize their carbon footprints through renewable power, home heating and driving offsets.
Choose2bgreen offers Green Mountain Power customers the ability to sign up for three different programs from its Web site: Greener GMP, CoolHome and CoolDriver. Greener GMP allows customers to purchase energy from renewable resources equal to some or all of their monthly use, the company says. CoolHome and CoolDriver - which are offered in partnership with Charlotte, Vt.-headquartered NativeEnergy - provide customers with an option to offset their individual carbon footprint associated with heating their homes and driving their cars, respectively.
The company also is now carbon neutral in its operations, which includes its offices, facilities, trucks and all business travel.
"By becoming carbon neutral in its operations and offering to help its customers to do the same, Green Mountain Power is modeling the way companies and individuals can take steps to reduce carbon emissions from our everyday activities," says Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute of Washington, D.C.
Green Mountain Power has a history of working to reduce carbon emissions - it offers renewable energy to its customers from its 6 MW Searsburg Wind Facility in Searsburg, Vt., as part of its power portfolio. According to a representative of Green Mountain Power, the utility is working with a wind farm developer on a possible expansion of the Searsburg facility. However, it has not been determined whether power from the expanded facility would be used for the choose2bgreen program, but it is possible.
