Before what I am about to write will make sense to you, you need to know that in the city we live in we don't buy electricity directly from an electric company. The city buys it and resells it to residents. We write a check every month to the city for our electricity usage, not an electric utility.

OK, with that out of the way, we received something in the mail from the city regarding a new program they are starting in 2005 that we think we will take part in. The city is going to start sourcing a percentage of the power they distribute from renewable resources!

Because right now electricity sourced this way costs more to generate they give each subscriber the choice of how much renewable energy they want to consume.

The green energy right now is priced $5 more for each 200 kilowatt hour chunk. To take part in the program we would just go out to a web site and tell them how much of our monthly electric bill should be from green electricity. We can do it in $5 increments. I think we will try $10 or $15 worth.

The mix of the renewable electricity is 90% wind, 5% small-hydro, and 5% solar.

I don't have the flyer in front of me but it said that each 200 kilowatt hours of renewable energy that replaces conventional energy has the same impact as planting 180 trees or not driving something like 2,800 miles.

There is a large wind farm about an hour drive from here that we are thinking about driving to today so we can see where some of our electricity will be coming from soon.