Interested in how sustainable the electricity you use is?  Information is below.  

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Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS):
The City has adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requiring that 33% of the City’s electric usage be supplied by eligible renewable energy resources by 2015, providing that goal can be reached without raising rates more than five percent.  The City has ramped up its purchases of renewable energy so that in 2010, about 19.7% of the City’s needs were supplied by renewable power.  As shown below, contracts are in place for projects that are expected to provide renewable supplies for about 31% of total needs by 2015.  The City is pursuing additional renewable energy supplies to meet the balance of the RPS needs, while also pursuing increased energy efficiency to reduce or eliminate increases in electricity demand.

Carbon free portfolio:
The City’s electric supply portfolio contains resources that are considered to be "eligible renewable energy resources."  This means that these resources can be counted as renewable and included in the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) target.  In addition, the City has large hydroelectric resources that provide a carbon-free supply, but do not count towards the RPS target.  This chart shows that, depending upon hydrologic year, over half of the City’s electric supplies are carbon-neutral.  

2010 pie chart:
This chart shows the breakdown of the City’s electric supplies for calendar year 2010.  As shown, about 64% of the supplies are carbon-neutral with hydro supplying almost half of the City’s needs.  Power purchases from the market meet the balance of the City’s needs.  As more of the City’s renewable projects are completed, the percentage of power purchased from the market is expected to decline.  The Power Content label provides additional information.

Carbon content: 
Another way to illustrate the “carbon content” of the electric supply portfolio is to show pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per megawatt-hour (MWh). This chart shows the downward trend of the carbon content of the portfolio since 2005.  This is largely due to the increasing purchases of renewable supplies.  The trend is expected to continue the downward trend in the future as more renewable supplies are added to the portfolio. 

The chart also shows the carbon content of the portfolio corrected for hydrologic year, since some years are wet (resulting in more hydroelectric generation) and some are dry (resulting in less hydroelectric generation).  For example, 2006 was a very wet year, so market purchases of electricity were minimal.  On the other hand, 2007 through 2009 were relatively dry years, requiring more market purchases. 

Note that carbon emission data for 2010 is not yet final.