This weekend at its “Earth Day Every Day Fair,” Green Mountain Power announced an energy vision to have a 100 percent carbon free energy supply by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The utility said the move is among the most aggressive carbon targets for a utility of GMP’s size in the country.
GMP’s current energy supply is 90 percent carbon free and more than 60 percent renewable. Its estimated 2018 power supply resource profile (which won’t be finalized until late 2019) is about 60 percent hydropower, 1.7 percent solar, 27.9 percent nuclear and about 10 percent fossil fuels. (See lead image) The utility’s goal to achieve 100 percent carbon free energy by 2025 and 100 percent renewable by 2030 is focused on ramping up local distributed resources for generating and storing energy, ramping up purchases of carbon free wind and hydro energy, all while making sure customers receive reliable, cost-effective service.
GMP serves more than ¾ of the state of Vermont and says that more than 15,000 GMP residential customers and over 3,000 commercial and industrial customers are now being served by independent solar companies.
GMP is also pioneering the use of stored energy to cut carbon and costs for all customers, including two solar storage installations, and three more being built this year. These projects are saving Vermonters money, by lowering peak energy costs, when power is the most expensive and dirty.
Transportation and heating are the two biggest sources of carbon emissions in Vermont. With emissions still rising despite action by many across the state to bend the curve, and with the need for major transformation of Vermont’s transportation and home heating sectors, Green Mountain Power will be hosting a series of events to provide customers with more information about all of the existing technologies available to them to transition to a cleaner, affordable and resilient future.
“As a customer-obsessed energy company, we’ve delivered on our promise to help customers transition to a community-, home-, and business-based energy system that is greener and more resilient through energy storage options like home batteries, and options for charging electric vehicles,” said Mary Powell, President and CEO of GMP.
“Our partnerships with Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont renewable energy community have been, and will continue to be critical to making this happen for Vermonters. Our new vision is the next step.”
