The company targets environmentally conscious consumers, setting up shop at farmer's markets, street fairs and concerts, approaching building-management companies, and standing outside green-friendly businesses, like Mr. Holland's food co-op. But as environmentally laudable as Green Mountain's products may be, there is a side to the business that is absent from the sales pitch: Green Mountain has long had corporate ties to the fossil fuel industry, and those ties have only gotten closer. Some potential customers will not mind, reasoning that the company will be a good influence on its polluting siblings. But as of this month, those who are uncomfortable about their money ultimately going to a diversified utility conglomerate have a lot more to worry about.
In September, BP and the rest of Green Mountain Energy's owners sold their stakes in the company to NRG Energy, one of the country's largest power plant operators, for $350 million. The deal became final on Nov. 5. In joining NRG, Green Mountain becomes part of a company that derives the vast majority of its electricity -- and its income -- from fossil fuels.
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And the service Green Mountain offers will not change under NRG: For every watt of energy that customers use, Green Mountain buys an equal amount of power from wind and hydroelectric plants. (Directing power from specific generating plants to specific customers on the local grid, the company emphasizes, is impossible.) The power that Green Mountain buys, spokeswoman Marci Grossman said, will come both from NRG's plants and from independent water and wind plants with which the company already has long-term contracts.
The biggest change -- from the perspective of the environmentally conscious -- seems to be that, as of the acquisition,
all of Green Mountain's profits now belong to NRG. That company, of course, can invest them in whichever technology it wants, regardless of environmental impact."If a consumer is looking for a company that is conclusively green, obviously NRG is not that," said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for the Utility Reform Network, a California-based ratepayer advocacy group.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-23-how-green-is-green-mountain-energyThere are a large number of truly "green" energy companies. Apparently, Green Mountain is not one of them. It should be noted that both their "President of residential services" and their CEO are former BP employees. If it were me, I'd look elsewhere for my "green cred," Empire State Building.