what are Renewable Energy Credits exactly?
How do they work? What are you really owning when you put your name on the dotted line? First things first: when renewable energy companies create power, they sell it to the nearest utility and it goes out on the grid and gets mixed with all the electricity produced by natural gas, coal, and hydro. There is no telling who actually gets to use the clean energy produced by the small renewable company– it just goes to the next person in range who happens to turn on their lights or run their dishwasher. But, there are a lot of people out there who want to support the production of renewable energy sources, and who would pay a premium to use renewable energy in their homes if such a thing were possible. So, renewable energy providers, like solar or wind power generators, sell Renewable Energy Credits in addition to selling the power they create. RECs are basically the right to claim whatever renewable energy was created. Random McMansion owner A who happened to plug in their Glade PlugIn a
