On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > Bob Pollin is the founder of a company, PEAR Energy, from which electriciy > users can buy solar and wind energy. > > http://pear-energy.com/switch-now.aspx > > Consumers spending a little more to go green.
You are not buying green energy. You are providing revenues to existing solar and wind projects and to Pear Energy. It is pure luck whether any of the energy generated by those projects is delivered to your meter, and your payments to Pear energy do not affect whether such energy is delivered to you. You get energy from your existing utility generated exactly as it was generated before you signed up. The day after you sign up, the amount of green energy generated in the U.S. is exactly the same as it was before you signed up. Pear would argue that what you are doing is providing incentives to develop more green energy down the road. Maybe, but that sure is not how they are selling it. In the how it works section they say: "Every month on your bill we show a side-by-side comparison of what you pay for clean energy versus what you would have paid if you were still buying coal, natural gas, OIL OR NUCLEAR-POWERED electricity from your utility." http://pear-energy.com/how-it-works.aspx . Read the whole page if you are curious. It clearly gives the impression that Pear energy actually delivers green energy too your meter, while phrasing it just carefully enough that they may not be guilty legally of misleading advertising. (I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if they are violating the law or not. But that phrasing is definitely misleading whether it exposes them to legal liability or not.) You have to dive to into FAQs to know what was going on. Or be experienced enough in the field to be 99.99% sure as you as you hear the pitch. > > > > Gene Coyle > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
