Public Power, CCA Green Power Programs Earn National Recognition

Public power utility and community choice aggregator green programs are included in the most recent set of rankings compiled by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Green power programs allow homes and businesses to procure green power through their electric utility or community choice aggregation.

Since 2000, NREL has compiled data on utility green pricing programs and released annual “Top 10” lists to recognize outstanding programs.

NREL recently released a document that contains updated 2022 rankings as well as new rankings of CCA green power sales. The document is updated annually.

Using information provided by utilities, NREL has developed "Top 10" rankings of utility green pricing programs for 2022 in the following categories: total sales, total number of customer participants, and participation rate (the percentage of utility customers that participated in green pricing programs).

Using information provided by CCAs, NREL has developed Top 10 rankings of CCA sales and customer participants.

All Top 10 lists are based only on those utilities and CCAs that report data to NREL.

With respect to utility green pricing sales (as of December 2022), the following public power utilities were ranked in the top 10 list for utilities:

Austin Energy (Rank #3/Green power sales: 988,049 MWh)
Tennessee Valley Authority (Rank #5/ Green power sales: 633, 215 MWh)

For utility green pricing customers (as of December 2022), Austin Energy was ranked sixth with a green power customer count of 28,714, while TVA was ranked 10th with a green power customer count of 9,416.

Four public power utilities and communities were also represented on the Top 10 list of utility green pricing sales rates (as of December 2022):

Waterloo, Wis. (Rank #2, sales rate: 16.7%)
River Falls, Wis. (Rank #3, sales rate: 8.3%)
Austin Energy (Rank #5, sales rate: 6.9%)
Stoughton, Wis. (Rank #10, sales rate: 3.9%)

In the top 10 rankings for utility green pricing participation rates, the following public power utilities were recognized (Due to a survey design error, the 2022 participation rate is based exclusively on residential customer participation):

River Falls, Wis. (Rank #2, sales rate: 14.8%)
Naperville Public Utilities/Illinois (Rank #6, sales rate: 6.1%)
Austin Energy (Rank #7, sales rate: 5.9%)
Muscoda, Wis. (Rank #9, sales rate: 5.1%)
Stoughton, Wis. (Rank #10, sales rate: 4.9%)

TVA and Naperville Public Utilities were also represented on the list of utilities with green tariff sales – TVA was ranked third with 633,602 MWh of sales and Naperville Public Utilities was ranked eighth with 2,040 MWh of sales.

TVA and Austin Energy were ranked fourth and sixth, respectively, on the top 10 list of utility green power all sales. All green power sales refer to the sum of utility green pricing and utility green tariff sales.

CCAs

NREL listed the following CCAs on the Top 10 list for green power sales (as of Dec. 2022). CCA green power sales refer to RECs retired on behalf of CCA customers above renewable portfolio standard obligations.

Clean Power Alliance (Rank #1, MWh sales: 3,570,040)
East Bay Community Energy (Rank #2, MWh sales: 1,361, 466)
MCE (Rank #3, MWh sales: 1,258,013)
San Diego Community Power (Rank #4, MWh sales: 1,075,258)
CleanPowerSF (Rank #5, MWh sales: 695,035)
Orange County Power Authority (Rank #6, MWh sales: 691, 901)
Peninsula Clean Energy (Rank #7, MWh sales: 591, 570)
Cape Light Compact (Rank #8, MWh sales: 511, 519)
Silicon Valley Clean Energy (Rank #9, MWh sales: 333,951)
Sonoma Clean Power Authority (Rank #10, MWh sales: 305,265)

The following CCAs were on the top 10 list for green power customer counts (as of December 2022). CCA green power customer counts include all customers purchasing a product with more renewable energy than required by state renewable portfolio standards.