January 31, 2018

Local Residents Suggest a Way to Say “No” To Dirty, Non-Renewable Energy Sources

To the Editor:

For our electricity needs, Princeton homeowners and businesses can take advantage of the important opportunity to embrace renewable wind-power and say “NO!” to dirty, non-renewable energy sources (oil, coal, gas) — and nuclear power as well.

While a number of organizations now provide green energy, CleanChoice is one of the simplest to navigate: a single telephone call! (You can also look at green-e.org).

CleanChoice Energy (cleanchoiceenergy.com; (800) 460-4900) is dedicated to helping us go green to fight global warming and climate change: 99 percent wind-power, 1 percent solar. They have built up trust over a ten-year period; their website is filled with information. Sign-up takes only the initial phone-call. CleanChoice manages the cost-free switch from PSE&G (from whom you will still get your gas/electric bill). You can have a fixed or a variable rate, with a low-low introductory offer. CleanChoice will notify you annually concerning the equivalent number of cars you have idled or taken off the road by using renewable energy sources. They are truly dedicated! And we can be too!

PSE&G will show you a monthly price-comparison of your CleanChoice electric charges vs. what electric by means of dirty fuels would have been. While CleanChoice appears to cost slightly more per kWh, we all know that the dollar cost of gas/coal-powered electricity is artificially low and does not take into account the true and much higher costs of dirty energy.

Furthermore, CleanChoice charges the customers less and less as more people sign up for this program. We hope that all of us will welcome our freedom to go green, help the planet’s climate, and personally reject a federal government that has pulled the United States out of the Paris Accords and will offset any of our lingering attachments to dirty, harmful sourcing for electricity.

CleanChoice lets us think globally, act locally, personally — and in the same spirit as Princeton’s pending Climate Action Plan spearheaded by Sustainable Princeton (sustainableprinceton.org). As SP’s director, Molly Jones, rightly noted at a recent meeting of Indivisible Princeton devoted to climate action, “There is no silver bullet” to resolve the hurdles we face; but “There is silver buckshot” (see “Sustainable Head Urges Climate Action Plan to Reduce Emissions,” Town Topics, Jan. 24, front-page article).

Let’s all be part of that communal, renewable firepower by signing on with CleanChoice. We will all breathe better.

Alexi Assmus, Rob Dodge

Maple Street

Keena Lipsitz

Shadybrook Lane

Suki Wasserman

Meadowbrook Lane

Lindsey Kayman

Mt. Lucas Road

Daniel A. Harris

Dodds Lane

Alexandra Bar-Cohen

Snowden Lane