• Differences between RECs and Offsets

    Our friends over at Williams had their take on this, and I wanted to add a few more points about the differences between Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and Offsets.

    First of all, RECs and offsets are entirely different environmental commodities. There are many misconceptions about RECs and offsets, and while some will say that it is because vendors have been misleading, I think it is more likely due to the fact that they are both somewhat abstract concepts to consumers and it does require a fair amount of research to be able to understand the differences between them.

    A REC, also referred to as a green tag, represensts the environmental benefits of one megawatt-hour of electricity generated by a renewable sources such as wind, solar, or small-scale hydropower. Another commonly cited benefit of RECs is that the money will incentivize the production of renewable energy resource.

    As many of our readers probably know, with out turbine, Carleton’s renewable energy credits were sold to Xcel and served as a monetary incentive to construct our wind turbine. Though I was not at Carleton when talks about the turbine were taking place, it is easy to say that the project might not have been financed if Carleton hadn’t been able to sell the credits.

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