What You Can Do To Support Clean Energy

Clean energy technologies can provide Massachusetts with significant economic, environmental, and public health benefits. For this reason, it is in the public interest to support an increased emphasis on clean energy. If you would like to advance clean energy in the state, there are many things you can do, including:

Use Energy Efficiently
Contribute to Green Electricity
Install Solar and Wind Systems on Your Property
Support Clean Energy in Your Community
Promote Effective Public Policy

Use Energy Efficiently

Although the Renewable Energy Trust works to add additional renewable electricity generating facilities to the energy supply, we realize that the cleanest, most economical energy solution is to use less energy in the first place. When less electricity is used, power plants emit fewer dangerous air pollutants and global warming gases. Moreover, you spend less money on electricity and fewer dollars leave Massachusetts to pay for coal, oil, and natural gas imports from other parts of the country and the world.

Energy efficiency represents the rare circumstance in which you can do something highly beneficial for society while personally benefiting financially, since many energy efficiency measures will end up saving you more money than they cost. For this reason, the starting point for those who care about clean energy will generally be to use energy more efficiently.

As a general strategy for cutting down on your energy use, focus on changes that you can implement one time and that will then automatically reduce your ongoing energy consumption. This is the most assured way of cutting down. For example, if you replace an incandescent lightbulb with a compact fluorescent, you will eliminate more than half of the pollution and electricity cost, and the new bulb will last for years without having to be changed.

• Ten Remarkably Easy Ways to Save Energy—and Money—at Home
• Your Most Important Energy-Efficiency Decisions

Contribute to Green Electricity

The vast majority of Massachusetts’ electricity is generated from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants. The fuels for these facilities must be imported into Massachusetts and their use contributes to respiratory ailments, acid rain, global warming, and other environmental and health problems. In fact, electricity generation causes more pollution than any other single human activity.

Green electricity (also called “green power” or “clean energy”) refers to electricity produced in ways that are considered to have fewer harmful environmental impacts than burning fossil fuels or running nuclear facilities. Although the definition of green electricity can vary, the term is generally applied to electricity from renewable energy sources:

• The sun
• Wind
• Small low-impact waterpower
• Bioenergy (organic matter including landfill gas)
• Geothermal (the Earth’s heat)
• Waves
• Tides

Choosing green electricity has the potential to support the development of additional renewable energy generating facilities. But since it requires you to pay a premium, you will need to decide whether you can afford to or want to personally contribute to green electricity.

• Green Electricity and What Consumers Accomplish by Purchasing It
• How to Participate in Green Electricity

Install Solar and Wind Systems on Your Property

An appealing feature of some clean energy technologies—most notably solar, wind, and fuel cells—is that they do not necessarily have to be deployed at large scale in major electricity generating facilities. Instead, they can be distributed locally to provide electricity for a particular building. Solar panels on a building can meet much of its electricity needs. A small wind turbine can generate electricity for a house, farm, or business.

These sorts of distributed generation systems can be especially desirable where there is no access to electricity through power lines from a utility company or it would be expensive to hook up to external power lines. In these circumstances, a solar or wind system can be a cost-effective, clean, logical solution to the need for power. Of course, because of the significant variations in wind levels, many more sites are suited to solar than wind.

More generally, distributed generation systems are most cost-effective when the power reduces the owner’s need to purchase electricity at retail prices. In some cases, a new home buyer will find that if solar panels are installed when the house is built or purchased, the monthly electricity savings will be greater than the monthly cost of including the solar electricity system in the mortgage. A factory or community facility with a large, steady electricity need and good available wind may find that a wind turbine is financially beneficial.

But, in most cases, small wind and solar systems will not currently yield a net positive financial return. The people who install them do so because they want to do something good for society and the environment. If they plan to own the property for many years, the reduction in their electricity bills may be great enough that the net cost of the system will seem quite affordable.

• Installing a Solar (Photovoltaic) System
• Consumer’s Guide to Small Wind Electric Systems

Support Clean Energy in Your Community

There are many ways for your community to advance renewable energy. Perhaps your town has good wind resources and could develop a community wind project. If a school construction project is planned, it can be a healthy, high-performance “green” school. A solar electricity system can be placed on a school so that students can use it to learn about renewable energy, or teachers can simply incorporate some of the many interesting renewable energy lesson plans into their curriculums. Community institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and civic organizations, can choose green electricity offerings or educate their members about other clean energy actions.

You can help make these things happen by bringing ideas and information to the relevant decisionmakers in your community or by organizing a clean energy project. More generally, there is a need to educate Massachusetts residents about the value and potential of renewable energy. You can arrange to bring educational materials, videos, or speakers to the meetings of local community organizations.

• Community Wind Projects
• About Green Schools
• Guide to Teaching Renewable Energy

Promote Effective Public Policy

Beyond the local community, governments can do much to advance clean energy. You can speak in support of the types of energy policies that you believe in. Here are some things you can do:

• Communicate with your elected representations.
• Participate in Town meeting.
• Join local/town committees/boards that work on energy issues.
• Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper.