The Bathtub is Getting Cleaner

As part of Green Mountain Energy, we’re often confronted with the unenviable task of explaining how you can use renewable energy to power your home without actually building a wind turbine in your backyard. We’ve taken to using an analogy of a bathtub full of water; dirty water comes from fossil fuels, while clean water comes from renewable sources. As you add more clean water to the tub, you dilute the dirty water and whole bath gets cleaner over time. See our nifty flash animation here at the Green Mountain site.

So you can imagine our excitement when we see stories like this one: “Renewable Energy Generation Climbs in 2008; Fossil Fuels Dip”! The Energy Information Administration released new data showing that non-hydro renewable energy increased by 17.6% last year, while coal and natural gas declined by 1.1% and 2.2% respectively.

Basically, this is our company’s mission playing out in real life. Some of these increases in clean energy were likely due to mandatory markets, like those created by state renewable portfolio standards. But part of the increase is also due to people voluntarily choosing to use renewable energy for their homes and businesses.

Demand is growing to shift our nation’s energy portfolio toward clean, inexhuastible sources like wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy. In fact, making the switch to clean energy is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint. And, as green initiatives and policies continue to occupy a prime position in our national consciousness, we can hope to see even more growth toward this goal in the future.