Why this year's "greening" of the Super Bowl is a greenwash

[wtmusic]

To help reduce the impact of that energy consumption, the National Football League and the Indianapolis Super Bowl XLVI Host Committee are partnering with Green Mountain Energy to purchase 15,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated at wind farms in North Dakota to offset the power associated with the event.

"It’s encouraging to see a prominent organization like the NFL making an effort to clean up its operations. But the devil is in the details.

At a second glance, one has to wonder if this REC purchase really makes an impact at all.

RECs are not physical electricity, but the market value of the “environmental attribute” of that clean electricity. As readers of Climate Progress may know, we often write about our skepticism of RECs. (See: Clean Energy Trainwreck: Why Most RECs are Bad, and How to Find the Good Ones.)"

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/05/418683/rec-greening-of-super-bowl/

[wtmusic]

1. Green Mountain Energy also "partnered" with Vermont Governor Pete Shumlin

to corner Vermont's energy market. They're just the greenest of green.