To the Editor:

Our town Council means well, but they’ve been sold a bill of goods that they’re presenting to us as the Princeton Community Renewable Energy Program. Contrary to the marketing hype, buying your power from Constellation NewEnergy will NOT reduce the amount of fossil fuels used to generate the power in the electric power grid, and it will not reduce pollution from local power plants. What it WILL do is reduce revenue to our local utility company, and instead send that revenue to Houston, Texas.

In New Jersey, electricity suppliers are now required to provide 21 percent of their power from renewable sources. New Jersey renewable power generators — from large commercial operations to small residential roof-top solar arrays such as the one on my home — receive one Renewable Energy Credit from the NJ BPU for every 1,000 kWh they generate. The way electricity suppliers satisfy the renewable sourcing requirement is by purchasing those credits, which allow them to (literally) take the credit for generating that power, even though they do not own the generators. Both PSE&G and Constellation NewEnergy actually produce only a tiny fraction of their power from renewable sources. The only way either company is able to claim to provide a significant amount of electricity from renewable sources is by purchasing the credit for that power from independently-owned renewable power generators. 

Constellation NewEnergy does not generate 50 percent of their power from renewable sources; they generate electricity from a mix of sources (including more from coal-burning power plants than PSE&G), and make it look “clean” with purchased credits. Since they sell electricity in 16 states, they can pretend that the electricity they sell in New Jersey is “from” renewable sources, while the power they sell in other areas is “from” fossil-fuel sources. In actuality, it is all from one grid — the same grid as the power supplied by PSE&G. PSE&G cannot play the same shell game, since they sell their power only in New Jersey; they have no territory where they can dump “dirty” power while reserving the “clean” power for Princeton.

Meanwhile, under the deal offered to us, PSE&G still has to maintain and repair the grid, maintain the connections to all of our homes, read our meters, and send out their repair crews in all weather, while Constellation NewEnergy syphons off PSE&G’s income from generating and supplying power. That’s not going to work for long; pretty soon PSE&G will have to raise their connection fees, just to maintain the infrastructure — and we can all kiss the trivial cost savings from switching to Constellation NewEnergy goodbye.

Don’t fall for Constellation NewEnergy’s shell game. When you receive the “invitation to join” the Princeton Community Renewable Energy Program, return the reply card or call 1 (833) 961-0753 to OPT OUT.

Beverly Wilson
Terhune Road