Ewall didn't know much about Green Mountain then, but NRDC set off alarms in his head. The mainstream organization, in his opinion, often sold out to corporate interests and compromised its environmental integrity.
"It didn't surprise me too much," Ewall recalls. "Corporations are very savvy at buying their way into environmental groups. I see it all the time."
John Anderson
National Green Power: R.W. Rushing and Pat Thomasson hope to compete with Green Mountain Energy.
John Anderson
Green Mountain Energy VP Gillan Taddune insisted on a 100 percent wind-powered product for Texas.
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So Ewall began looking into Green Mountain. What he found spurred him to launch a boycott against the company. On the Boycott Green Mountain Web site, Ewall posts his four-part report on the company with links to documents and news articles, accusing the company of selling deceptive products that for all its environmental claims do more harm than good.
He's not the only one. The Environmental Working Group, a national organization, announced a boycott of Green Mountain over Wyly's pro-Bush ads but withdrew the boycott after Wyly said he would stop buying political ads. Public Citizen also has criticized Green Mountain for charging boutique prices for power that was already being generated anyway.
Wenonah Hauter, who heads the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program at Public Citizen, says not much has changed in California since Public Citizen released its report "Green Buyers Beware" in October 1998.
"It's kind of like gourmet marketing," she says. "You feel good about what you're doing, but you have no way of insurance to check on it and see if it's benefiting or just paying a premium for feeling better."
Renewable energy expert Nancy Rader, who wrote the report, looked into green electricity products in California, the first state to deregulate. Green Mountain sold several blends in California that claimed to be 100 percent renewable, with the promise of 25 percent "new renewables" for its most expensive brand, called "Wind for the Future." (Renewables are any energy source that naturally replenishes itself over time. New renewables refer to energy generated from newly built plants, not existing ones.)
Rader found that most green products on the market had no positive impact on the environment, and in some cases, such as Green Mountain, a consumer's purchase of a green product inadvertently caused pollution.
Green Mountain does not generate any of its own power but contracts with producers. For its California products, it bought energy from biomass and hydro plants owned by PacifiCorp, a utility based in Portland, Oregon. But Rader learned that the plants were already operating at full capacity and would operate regardless of any sale to Green Mountain. Therefore, the premium that consumers were paying supported not at-risk renewable plants or new renewables but PacifiCorp. Since PacifiCorp owns mostly coal-fired plants, the customers were potentially extending the use of dirty power plants.
Rader also criticized companies for charging in advance for products to be delivered later. Green Mountain's "Wind for the Future" pledged 10 percent new wind content by November 1999.
In response to Public Citizen's report, Green Mountain said it could not change electric generation overnight and that "by signing up customers, we prove that green demand exists, thereby helping to support the construction of new renewable generation." Green Mountain did keep its promise and built three 700-kilowatt wind turbines in Southern California in July 1999.
Ideally, the company should have built the turbines first, Rader says.
"If a green marketer put up some wind turbines and said, 'We want to sell to green consumers,' that would be great….The marketer would take the risk for those couple of turbines," she says. "What they did in California was say, 'Gee, we're not willing to take that risk. First we want to sell a bogus product and see if they'll buy it. If we're sure they do, then we'll put up a wind turbine.' "
A marketer doesn't even have to build new plants to provide a meaningful product, Rader says. It could sign a long-term contract with an at-risk wind farm, ensuring its long-term generation. Money would go directly to keeping that plant open. Instead, Rader found that most of the premiums charged for green power went to marketing and advertising costs, not to renewable energy content. Of the average $10 a month extra that consumers paid, some $7.50 to $9.50 went to overhead and marketing costs, the Public Citizen report says.
When Pennsylvania opened its electricity market in January 1999, Mike Ewall found Green Mountain playing the same games in his state. Green Mountain's three Pennsylvania products consist predominately of energy from natural gas generators and large-scale hydropower, with a small percentage of renewables from landfill gas. (Natural gas, though cleaner than coal, is not renewable energy.)
Ewall contacted several of the plants that Green Mountain contracted with and found that they were already operating at full capacity before doing business with Green Mountain.
"They were making zero difference for the environment….They sell stuff that is already out there. They just repackage it," Ewall says.
Although Green Mountain erected a 10.4-megawatt wind farm -- the largest in the state -- in Garrett, Pennsylvania, in May 2000, part of the company's renewables comes from biomass. Biomass is generally described as organic waste incineration. Think of a pile of corn husks. The idea is that as the corn husks decompose, they release methane into the atmosphere. Why not harness that methane instead of letting it into the air, and burn it to create electricity?
