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Meatfrom1stgrade t1_ireforl wrote

Reply to comment by DisciplineShot2872 in The fake electric scammers are out today by stupidjesse

Glad I could help!

>At least the offers I get in the mail pushing full renewable are honest and open that they're more expensive, using the environment as the selling point.

Well not exactly... full renewable doesn't actually mean the electricity you purchase is renewable (or that it is carbon free). Renewable in this case means they try to sell you as much renewable energy as possible, but there's not very much renewable power available in our part of the grid. So they buy renewable energy credits (REC) to cover the non-renewable electricity, they sell you. In theory, that should encourage more projects from renewable sources, but due to some complexities in the system, the RECs being purchased by individuals don't provide a good incentive to build more renewable power.

More information on RECs: https://www.urbangridsolar.com/what-is-a-rec-how-do-they-work/

This is also ignoring that not all renewables are carbon free (looking at you biomass), and that the largest source of carbon free electricity isn't renewable, and isn't supported by RECs (nuclear).

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DisciplineShot2872 t1_irege9i wrote

Oh, I'm not switching, partly because I don't believe them. I'm new in Philly after 15 years in Arizona, and California before that. I have horror stories about energy deregulation that would make your skin crawl. Remember Enron? Yep, victimized by them. And by the outfit that bought most of California's power plants, then took a third of them offline for the summer for "maintenance", driving prices up by limiting supply while simultaneouslydriving their costs down by shutting facilities down. And by the generators being able to charge the transmission companies several times what the transmission companies' cap was, bankrupting the transmitters while simultaneously misdirecting the blame onto them. Deregulation is a scam in and of itself, and I don't trust ANY of them.

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