The Mercer Island City Council voted late last month to give $6,000 to PSE to support its Green Power program. The voluntary program pools funds from customers that wish to encourage the development of greener power sources. Customers do so by paying a bit extra per kilowatt-hour on their electric bills. The $6,000 represents an extra .006 cents per kwh for the equivalent of one third of the city’s annual utility bill.

Mayor Bruce Bassett said the Council may consider increasing the amount to $18,000.

The goal is to collect money to help shore up the demand for alternative power such as burning wood waste, and lowering the demand for traditional thermal resources. PSE uses the funds to provide a both a market and a means for small energy providers to deliver energy from their alternative or renewable energy projects.

“It is an important thing for us to do,” Bassett said.

Washington voters approved Initiative 937 which became law in 2006. It requires energy providers such as PSE to add renewable or green power into their resource mix. Each utility must use renewable energy resources to serve at least three percent of its customer demand by 2012 through 2015; nine percent by 2016 through 2019, and 15 percent by 2020 and beyond

According to Heather Mulligan, who administers the program for PSE, the utility is on track to meet the 2012 goal with the wind turbines (owned by the utility) in central Washington that are already in place. They are not part of the Green Energy program

The law, Alternative Energy Options, RCW 19.29A.090 also  requires utilities to offer their customers a voluntary option to ‘buy’ green power.

Mulligan explained that the company uses the money from Green Power participants to help small generation projects. They include landfill gas, biomass fuels from manure from dairy farms and wood waste, solar energy and wind. There are presently less than a dozen producers on PSE’s green power list. PSE buys their power in advance to help them with start-up costs.

PSE customers have provided $16 million to date through the Green Power program.

PSE presently generates more than half of its power from thermal-based resources because they are substantially less expensive.

According to Mulligan, collecting enough funds through regular rates for small green power producers is not feasible.

“We cannot get the rates up high enough for renewable energy to make sense,” she said.