Vermont Utility Sets Example in National Green and Environmental Sustainability Trend

Dec. 12, 2007 - PRLog -- Colchester, VT – Green Mountain Power, an electrical utility located in Colchester, Vermont, is rapidly becoming a leader in the Green Mountain State and beyond by positioning and encouraging environmental sustainability and renewable energy use and practices to its customers, community, and employees.

“Environmental responsibility is one of our core values at Green Mountain Power,” said Mary Powell, Green Mountain Power’s senior vice president and chief operating officer. “We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish over the past few years, but interestingly, the more we improve our footprint, the more we see that can be done. We look at this work as just the beginning of what we can do.”

Green Mountain Power green highlights over the past year and beyond include:

Encouraging employees to reduce their own carbon footprint by purchasing fuel efficient vehicles.  Eligible Green Mountain Power employees receive cash incentives for purchasing vehicles that have the best fuel economy on the market.

Green Mountain Power is carbon neutral in office and facility operations as well as in trucking and business travel – using bio-diesel fuel in trucking and hybrid vehicles in business travel.

The company publishes an annual sustainability report using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, available at www.greenmountainpower.com/about/commitment.html

In 2001, the company started renovations to improve energy efficiency and conservation in its offices and currently is working towards a LEEDS certification for a newly renovated Southern Vermont service center.

In 2002, Green Mountain Power became the first utility in the country to offer customers the option to offset their total home carbon emissions through the CoolHome program.

In the spring of 2007, Green Mountain Power launched the Choose2BGreen program that provides customers with a way to neutralize their carbon footprint through renewable power and home heating and driving offsets, a substantial enhancement of the CoolHome program.  

The company recently launched a website for the program, www.choose2bgreen.com, which details the three programs – GreenerGMP, CoolHome, and CoolDriver:
- GreenerGMP allows customers to purchase energy from certified renewable resources equal to some or all of their monthly use.
- CoolHome and CoolDriver provide customers with an option to offset their individual carbon footprint associated with heating their homes and driving their cars, respectively and are offered in partnership with NativeEnergy (www.nativeenergy.com) headquartered in Charlotte, Vermont.  The offsets are purchased by NativeEnergy and are used to help finance the construction of renewable energy projects, including Vermont and Northeast-based methane and biomass projects.

Green Mountain Power’s Choose2BGreen website (www.choose2bgreen.com) also provides a blog discussion forum with Green Mountain Power employees and generates both local and global environmental resources to readers.

Green Mountain Power’s six-megawatt wind power plant located in Searsburg, Vermont provides emission-free, renewable energy to over 1,500 Vermont households and serves as a premier education resource for wind generation in cold climates and environmentally sensitive regions.

Green Mountain Power is the 2006 recipient of the Large Company of the Year Award by the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility for its sustained commitment to socially responsible business practices.  The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation and the Vermont Small Business Development Center also recognized Green Mountain Power as an Environmental Partner in the Vermont Business Environmental Partnership for its excellent environmental management practices, “green” purchasing, and forward thinking environmental policies.

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Green Mountain Power (www.greenmountainpower.biz) is an electric utility owned by Northern New England Energy Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gaz Métro, a leading Québec energy company with a long history of investment in Vermont. Green Mountain Power transmits, distributes and sells electricity and utility construction services in the State of Vermont in a service territory with approximately one quarter of Vermont’s population. It serves approximately 92,000 customers.

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