Going green can be tough, consumers find - Philly.com

Andrew Maykuth

Last updated: Friday, July 3, 2015, 8:52 AM

Like many Americans, Tina Brunetti worries about climate change and wanted to spend her household's energy budget on a power supplier more mindful of the environment.

But the Chadds Ford pharmacist said she was overwhelmed with conflicting information from electricity suppliers that promised "green" alternatives, including some offers from acquaintances who peddled electricity plans in their spare time.

"The quantity of information was way too much," she said. "I was getting bombarded with offers from people I knew."

Rather than choosing a new supplier, Brunetti opted to stay with the default service provided by the local utility, Peco Energy Co., even though much of its supply is what green-power advocates derisively call "brown" power.

Like Brunetti, about 65 percent of Peco's customers have chosen to stick with the utility's power supply, despite an array of alternatives, including discount suppliers and green-energy producers.

Though 34 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup in March said they worry a "great deal" about the environment, that has not translated into a mass exodus from conventional power suppliers.

Only 141,786 Pennsylvania customers, or about 2.5 percent of the state's 5.7 million electricity customers, have chosen a clean-energy supplier, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission's 2013 numbers, the latest available.

(New Jersey offers Electric Choice, but the market is more opaque than Pennsylvania's, and the state offers no independent one-stop shopping.)

Green power's higher cost is one reason few customers switch. But there's also a crowded bazaar of suppliers offering a dizzying menu of options.

The PUC's power-shopping website, papowerswitch.com, lists 117 offers for Peco Energy residential customers from 57 suppliers.

When the list is filtered to include only renewable-energy offers, there are still 45 deals to compare. Of those, 13 derive some or all of their power from Pennsylvania renewable sources. Ten get some or all of it from Pennsylvania wind turbines.

And those are just the suppliers listed with the PUC. Other green-energy suppliers, such as the Washington-based nonprofit Groundswell, engage in more direct-marketing methods through environmental organizations and community groups.

Green-energy customers are highly desired by the industry because they are more likely to remain loyal to their suppliers than customers who shop strictly for price.

"A customer on a renewable-energy product has actively decided what is important to them and has selected their supplier accordingly," said Ritchie Hudson, Pennsylvania chairman of the Retail Energy Supply Association, a trade group.

Yet price still matters for some renewable-energy customers. So a word of caution to those who might be shopping right now: Summer is typically the worst time of year to test the market because wholesale prices tend to be higher.

Plus, Peco's "price-to-compare," the cost it charges customers who don't shop, is set until the end of August at its lowest point since Pennsylvania adopted market rates in 2011. At 8.2 cents a kilowatt hour, Peco's price is very difficult for any supplier to beat, much less a green-energy provider.

Still, several green-energy suppliers now offer short-term introductory fixed-rate deals lower than Peco's rate: Green Mountain Energy; Frontier Energy; NRG Home; Oasis Energy; and Talen Energy.

Most renewable suppliers come in at least 10 percent or 20 percent higher. One producer quotes a rate 68 percent above Peco's. That would cost a typical Peco customer about $38 more a month.

A decision to go green is further complicated by the different types of energy supply available.

The terms "green" energy and "renewable" energy are often used interchangeably by marketers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says renewable-energy technologies rely on non-diminishing fuel sources such as sun, wind, moving water, organic plant and waste material, and the earth's heat (geothermal). But some renewable-energy technologies, such as large hydroelectric dams, can have adverse environmental trade-offs. "Green power" is a superior subset of renewable power, according to the EPA.

For some consumers, the source of renewable energy is an important aspect of their clean-energy decision. Many suppliers buy renewable-energy credits from giant Midwestern wind farms, which are much cheaper than credits from Pennsylvania producers.

The Energy Co-op, a Philadelphia member-owned organization with about 3,000 electricity customers, takes pride in offering wind and solar power generated in Pennsylvania. Its solar energy is derived from individuals in the area, to whom it pays above-market prices to incentivize solar adoption.

But its prices range from 27 percent to 35 percent above Peco's current price, and its membership rolls have been static, largely because of a lack of marketing, said Glenn Smith, the co-op's new executive director.

"For us as a cooperative, it's important to offer a Pennsylvania product," Smith said. "What we're trying to convey to our members is that we're paying more for a product that has local benefits, and that resonates with many of our members."

To an extent, all customers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware already derive some electricity from green producers by virtue of state mandates that require an increasing percentage of power to come from qualified renewable sources.

New Jersey's renewable portfolio standard will require 22.5 percent renewable power by 2021. Delaware will require 25 percent by 2025.

Pennsylvania's alternative-energy portfolio standard, created in 2004, requires 18 percent of the supply from alternative sources by 2021.

The Pennsylvania law is not as strict as those in neighboring states because it allows more than half of its power to come from "Tier II" sources, including waste coal, distributed generation systems, demand-side management, large-scale hydro, municipal solid waste, wood pulping and manufacturing by-products, and coal-to-gas technology.

In the current renewable-energy fiscal year, which began June 1, Pennsylvania suppliers must obtain 13.7 percent of their power from alternative suppliers: 8.2 percent from the Tier II sources; 0.25 percent from solar; and 5.25 percent from non-solar Tier I sources, primarily wind.

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amaykuth@phillynews.com

215-854-2947@maykuth