Sustainability

Customer impact

Over the last 20+ years, we’ve been dedicated in our mission: to inspire hope and motivate action through the use of clean energy. As a carbon-neutral company, we place sustainability at the heart of everything we do.

Thanks to our customers, we help create positive change for the planet by reducing carbon impact every day. Since 2002, we’ve tracked the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions avoided by the residential and commercial customers who buy our products or sign up for our plans.

Traditional electricity generation creates greenhouse gases and contributes to air pollution. Clean energy sources like wind and solar power do not create CO2 emissions. Also, carbon offsets neutralize the effects of carbon-intensive activities like travel or daily commutes. To calculate our impact numbers, we only count the avoided CO2 emissions attributable to “new” renewable energy facilities.*

Company accountability

We open our books each year to a third-party auditor. These audits ensure that 100% of the clean electricity our customers purchase is backed by renewable energy projects. You can learn more about our product standards or review our past results in our sustainability reports.

To ensure we’re providing comprehensive, sustainable solutions, we also offer select Green-e® Energy certified products. These include our Go Local Solar plan for Texas residential customers and our Green Mountain Energy Certified Electricity – TRE product for commercial businesses. You can learn more about Green-e® standards here.

Employee impact

Because Green Mountain Energy wants to be as sustainable as possible, we regularly take a close look at our operations to see where we can improve so we can become a more eco-focused company.

We keep our footprint low.

We’ve measured our corporate greenhouse gas emissions each year since 1998. By using 100% renewable energy in our offices, we've also offset 100% of our measured corporate carbon footprint since 2002.

We’re tree-lovers, not tree-cutters.

We use 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper printed with soy ink for any of our printing or mailing materials. We also work with FSC-certified printers to ensure that we use products supporting forest conservation.

We’re part of one big green team.

We’re dedicated to an eco-conscious workplace. We celebrate Earth Day and created the Green Mountain Energy Sun Club®, a charitable program funding sustainable initiatives for nonprofits.

*”New” facilities are those that began operation or were repowered within the past 15 years (e.g., 2006 for 2020 sales). The energy generated by these new facilities displaces the need for an equivalent amount of energy from fossil fuel-powered facilities, thereby avoiding the CO2 emissions that would have been created in the absence of the renewable energy generation.

Our customers have avoided

 

pounds of CO2

That’s like planting

 

new trees.