Green sleaze: The EPA helps corporations scrub their images while screwing the planet

http://grist.org/business-technology/green-sleaze-the-epa-helps-corporations-scrub-their-images-while-screwing-the-planet/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is so progressive on climate change that it is currently responsible for the entirety of U.S. climate policy. The agency is moving forward with regulations on new and existing coal-fired power plants, by far the largest source of CO2 emissions in the country, and has already locked in historic vehicle mileage standards. The current EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, is both a climate warrior and a down-to-earth person, who fully understands the climate challenge and intends to use EPA authority to fix it. In short, the EPA is amazing, and may even save civilization through its leadership on climate.

That’s why it’s surprising that this very agency continues to run, and aggressively advertise, a program that promulgates false solutions, prevents real and meaningful action on climate by business, and effectively misinforms the public.

I’m talking about the Green Power Partnership, which encourages corporations to buy “clean energy.” According to the program: “As part of the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, more than 1,500 organizations are using more than 29 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, avoiding carbon pollution equal to that created by the electricity use of more than 3 million American homes.” The program, EPA claims, “avoid(s) carbon dioxide emissions, reduce(s) some types of air pollution, and hedge(s) against future electricity price increases.”

Only problem: It doesn’t do any of those things. That’s because many of the participating corporations aren’t actually buying clean energy, they are buying very cheap Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) — sketchy pieces of paper that are surrogates for clean energy but which, most of the time, don’t do anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. RECs are so questionable that they have been debunked dozens of times in the media, most prominently in Businessweek.