Austin, Texas Goes Green!

The City of Austin, Texas, has become the largest municipality in the U.S. to power all of its facilities using only renewable energy.

As of Oct. 1 all of the city’s municipal facilities subscribe to Austin Energy’s GreenChoice renewable energy product.

In all, the City of Austin has bought about 400 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy. The City of Houston is the only U.S. municipality to buy more renewable power. However, Houston’s 438 million kWh accounts for just 34 percent of its energy use, according to an Austin Energy release.

The renewable energy will be produced at a wind farm in West Texas.

Figures released in May showed that Austin Energy sold the most renewable energy under voluntary green power programs of any utilities in 2010.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory figures showed that the energy company used wind and landfill gas to sell 754 million kWh of voluntary renewables in 2010, information derived from Environmental Leader.

This achievement comes at an exciting time as the U.S. Green Chamber prepares to open a branch in near by San Antonio. President, Dr. Rich LaHaye of the Lone Star Chapter has this to way about the announcement;

“Congratulations to the City of Austin for becoming ‘The largest municipality in the entire nation, to power all of its facilities using only renewable energy.’ Once again the ‘City’ of Austin demonstrates an impressive level of leadership and innovation – The kind Texans so greatly desire and deserve from our Governor and the leaders of our Texas State House Chambers – when it comes to renewable energy and resource conservation.

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