Green Mountain Energy

Green Mountain offers more than just another choice in energy providers. Beyond providing reliable electricity service at competitive rates, we give consumers the chance to use sun, wind and water for good. Since 1997, our mission has been to change the way power is made by offering cleaner, renewable sources of energy instead of limited and polluting fossil fuels. As a company we are 100% committed to renewable energy, and we invite you to join us!

At Green Mountain, we hold ourselves to the highest standards in terms of how we run our business and interact with our customers and the community, as well as the impact we have on the environment. The following are our corporate values:

Integrity

Integrity is the foundation of our business. We will adhere, individually and collectively, to our commitments, our values, and the ethical conduct of our business.

Sustainability

We are dedicated to the environment and maintaining lasting, mutually beneficial relationships in all aspects of our business.

• To customers, we are committed to providing quality products and services that consistently represent an exceptional value and result in high customer satisfaction.
• To society, we are committed to improving the environment through the products we sell and how we conduct our business.
• To employees, we are committed to offering a rewarding workplace that encourages mutual respect, communication, openness to challenge, and the opportunity for both personal and professional growth.
• To our investors, we are committed to creating value and consistently delivering outstanding financial returns.

Results

Customers, society, employees, and investors will measure us by what we deliver. We will relentlessly pursue outstanding results that meet our company goals and objectives.

Green Mountain Energy Company is committed to maintaining its position as the nation’s leading competitive retail provider of cleaner energy and carbon offset solutions. The company has two primary business units: residential and commercial energy.

Residential Products

Green Mountain offers retail customers in competitive markets in Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania cleaner energy via direct access retail electric service.

In traditional markets, Green Mountain partners with utilities who want to offer renewable energy products to their customers. We partner with Portland General Electric, which has the nation's #1 ranked green pricing program among investor-owned utilities. Additionally, we partner with utilities in New York and New Jersey that run multi-supplier green pricing programs.

Outside of these areas, Green Mountain offers renewable energy certificates and carbon offset products to help reduce the environmental impact of everyday activities like electricity use, driving and flying.

Commercial Products

Green Mountain is one of the premier retail providers of energy products to businesses and institutions, primarily focusing on the competitive electricity markets in Texas and New York City. We provide cost-competitive, cleaner energy to our customers, along with exceptional service.

Outside of the Texas and New York City regions, Green Mountain offers innovative and cost effective carbon reduction solutions to commercial sector clients seeking to improve their environmental position. In addition to carbon offset and renewable energy certificate (REC) products, Green Mountain provides a comprehensive suite of consulting and other services including assistance with green marketing strategy, corporate sustainability reporting, and voluntary emissions reporting.

Green Mountain Energy Company shares our customers’ commitment to the environment. We are inspired by the success that we have already achieved together, and are passionate about continuing to work towards changing the way power is made. In addition to the pursuit of this important mission, we believe in operating our company in a sustainable way.

We are also committed to product integrity. In order to reinforce our commitment, Green Mountain hires an independent third-party auditor to ensure our renewable energy and carbon offset purchases accurately match our retail sales volumes. The audit includes examination and testing of our records, including our customer sales records, renewable energy credit and carbon offset purchase contracts and attestations, and product content labels. We conduct this 'green audit' on an annual basis. Read the latest audit report.

Green Mountain “walks the talk”. Here are a few examples:

• We estimate the CO2 emissions from all of our key business activities and act to reduce or offset them. We pledge to offset 100% of our corporate emissions with green power and carbon offset purchases, which we have done since 2004.
• Green Mountain Energy Company achieved the Silver certification level for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the interior space of its corporate headquarters in downtown Austin, Texas. At the time of construction, our office was only the 2nd LEED Silver Commercial Interior rated space in Texas.
• We have an active employee commuting program and reward our top commuters every month, recently earning us the 2009 Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce “Take on Traffic” Award.
• A group of Green Mountain employees, the 'Green Ambassadors', promotes environmental stewardship, supports the environmental policies throughout the company and sponsors sustainable events such as nature trail cleanups.
• Earth Day is our favorite holiday! That’s when our main company celebration takes place, which usually includes a variety of activities, such as workshops, speakers, nature trail cleanups and environmentally-friendly gifts for all employees.
• We have worked with American Forests to preserve forest ecosystems by planting more than 100,000 trees since 1997.
• We have strong employee participation in Earth Share's annual giving campaign. In addition, employees can also purchase renewable energy credits to offset a portion of their household’s electricity use through our Employee Offset program.
• We use environmentally preferable printing methods whenever possible, including using soy-based inks on paper made with at least 50% post-consumer fiber and benign whitening products. The durable goods purchased must be made free of child labor and with no old-growth forest content.
• Through our long time membership in the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible Economies coalition, we publicly issue a biannual sustainability report that discloses our corporate environmental policies and performance. Our 2010-2011 Ceres sustainability report will be published in 2012.

Green Mountain Energy Company began in Vermont in 1997 with a simple idea: use the power of consumer choice to change the way power is made. Over a decade later, now headquartered in Austin, Texas, Green Mountain remains 100% committed to this mission. We proudly continue to offer only products that are better for the environment to our residential, business, institutional and governmental customers.

And when we look at the numbers, they tell a pretty powerful story: Green Mountain customers are having an impact!

Since 1997, our customers have helped to prevent as much CO2pollution as the equivalent of:

• Taking 1.7 million cars off the road for a year
• Over 5.9 billion households turning off their lights for a day
• Recycling over 47 billion cans or 7.7 billion pounds of newspaper

Our customers' demand for clean, renewable energy supports the Green Mountain Energy® Wind Farms–Langford and Elbow Creek. These two West Texas wind farms are jointly capable of producing up to 270 megawatts (MW) – enough to power 220,000 homes.

All of our customers together have helped spur the development of over 50 new wind and solar facilities across the nation, many of which are located in the communities we serve.

The facilities are owned and operated by third parties and are often branded as Green Mountain through licensing agreements because the demand from our customers played a significant role in getting these projects built.
Many of these are Green Mountain Solar® projects that have been brought to life through the contributions of members of the Green Mountain Energysm Sun Clubsm. A few recent recipients of Sun Club solar donations include:

In 1997, Green Mountain was founded with the mission to change the way power is made. Over a decade later, we remain 100% committed to this mission. From electricity products made using clean, renewable sources like wind to carbon offset products that help neutralize carbon emissions, every single product offered by our company has an environmental benefit. This makes Green Mountain the leading competitive retail electricity provider in the nation that's dedicated to cleaner energy – a distinction we're quite proud of!

Together with our customers, we've made a difference for the environment. Here's how:

Since our inception, our customers have helped avoid more than 19.4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. That's like:

• Taking over 1.7 million cars off the road for a year
• 16 million households turning off their lights for a year
• Over 961 million trees would absorb in one year

All of our customers together have helped spur the development of over 50 new wind and solar facilities across the nation.

Our customers' demand for clean, renewable energy supports the Green Mountain Energy® Wind Farms–Langford and Elbow Creek. These two West Texas wind farms are jointly capable of producing up to 270 megawatts (MW) – enough to power 220,000 homes.

Did you know that most of the electricity in the U.S. is made from non-renewable, polluting sources such as coal? Most people also don't realize that the traditional production of electricity is the largest source of industrial air pollution in the U.S. But there's a better way….

Clean energy is 100% pollution-free and produced entirely from renewable sources, such as wind, meaning the resources used to make them are naturally replenished and virtually inexhaustible. Supporting clean energy is Green Mountain's whole reason for being – it's why we were founded and what we continue to strive for each day.

Learn more about how clean energy works, or if you're ready to join us in our mission to change the way power is made, simply click 'Switch Now', and your switch to Green Mountain will be underway. It's that easy!

The Bath Tub

Imagine the electric grid as a giant bathtub that is constantly being filled from many different faucets — each one represents a different electricity generation source such as coal, natural gas, nuclear and wind. Each time you use electricity, you drain a little water from the bathtub.

Most of the water being poured into the tub is from faucets connected to polluting fossil fuel sources — i.e., “dirty” water. But some of the water comes from a small but growing number of faucets associated with clean renewable sources, which contribute pure, clean water.

As the demand for electricity from renewable sources increases, more of the clean water goes into the tub — and less of the dirty water from fossil fuel sources is needed. Over time, as more and more people choose clean energy, we should start to see the water in the bathtub getting cleaner. How great would it be to see a pure, clean bathtub?

Buying renewable energy does not mean that electricity is coming directly from wind farms or other clean energy sources to your home — it is impossible to direct any specific electron that travels through the electric grid. However, it does mean that the electricity being poured into the grid on your behalf comes from pollution-free and renewable sources, rather than dirtier generation sources like coal and oil. Here’s how: we purchase generic electricity to serve our customers’ minute-by-minute power needs AND we ensure that enough cleaner energy is produced through the purchase of renewable energy certificates to match our customers’ usage. This is how we ensure that you are purchasing a renewable energy product.

Renewable energy certificates (referred to as RECs, and also known as renewable energy credits) represent the environmental and other non-power attributes of renewable electricity generation and are part of most renewable electricity products.

Reliability

When you sign up for a cleaner Green Mountain Energy electricity product, you are choosing how the electricity you buy is generated, not how it is delivered. Thus, the reliability of your electricity service will not change; there’s no rewiring or special equipment required for your home. The local utility company stills owns and maintains the poles and wires that deliver electricity to your home, restores service outages and handles meter issues.

Why Clean Electricity?

Your purchase of clean Green Mountain Energy electricity, combined with other customers’ purchases, increases the demand for renewable energy from inexhaustible sources like wind and water. Ultimately, if more customers like you make the positive choice for clean, renewable electricity, less of our electricity will have to come from limited and polluting fossil fuel resources. Clean electricity has a wide variety of benefits.

Did you know that the traditional production of electricity is the largest source of industrial air pollution in the U.S.? That’s the bad news. The good news is that with Green Mountain you can choose to support clean, 100% pollution-free, renewable electricity instead. You can actually be part of the solution to this pollution problem!

The benefits of generating electricity using clean renewable resources are broad, ranging from environmental to economic. By choosing clean electricity you can do something positive for the environment today that also creates benefits for the generations of tomorrow

Environmental Benefits

• No emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), mercury, nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2) or particulate matter into the air, water or soil. Commonly cited effects of these harmful pollutants include climate change, mercury poisoning, acid rain and smog
• Doesn’t require fossil-fuel extraction that seriously damages the land
• Made from unlimited renewable sources that will never run out, unlike limited and polluting fossil fuel sources
• Helps preserve and protect the environment for future generations

Economic Benefits

• Creates employment opportunities in the green job sector in the U.S.; between 1998 and 2007, clean energy economy jobs — a mix of white-and blue-collar positions — grew by 9.1 percent, while total jobs grew by only 3.7 percent (Pew Charitable Trust)
• Helps secure America’s energy future by investing in domestic sources of energy
• Brings development to rural areas, where renewable facilities are often sited to take advantage of ample space and resource potential

No matter which of these reasons is most important to you, any one of them can be a great motivation to choose cleaner electricity from Green Mountain!

Green Mountain Energy Company is not only an electricity provider; we are also committed to helping our customers reduce energy usage as a way to have a positive impact on the environment and save money at the same time. Visit our Energy Saver Center to find resources to help you make smart decisions about how you use energy - that are also smart decisions for your wallet.