Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2014
Vermont may be best known for maple syrup and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but now its largest city can boast another accomplishment. The city of Burlington (pop. 42,000) now gets 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. The Burlington Electric Department (BED) is the state’s largest municipal utility. Wind, hydro and biomass provide most of the city’s electricity, along with some fossil-fueled generation that comes via short-term contracts from the greater New England grid, which BED offsets with renewable energy credit purchases.
Now, with BED’s recent purchase of a nearby 7.4 megawatt hydroelectric project early in September, Burlington is 100 percent renewable. “This has been a goal of BED for over a decade, so we are excited to finally reach [it],” Mary Sullivan, communications coordinator for BED, told the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The Burlington Initiative is part of Vermont’s goal to produce 90 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2050, including electricity, heating, and transportation.
— Rocky Mountain Institute, Oct. 21, and Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 27, 2014
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