Business Insight Zone

Note this interesting list from MSN City Guides:

The 10 Greenest Cities in America

Austin, home of Hoover’s World HQ, is first on the list — alphabetically, at least! — and deservedly so, since Austin has a long-standing commitment to green energy and green lifestyles in general.

One small quibble with this statement:

If you want to sign up for green power from Austin Energy, possibly the greenest power grid in the country, you can get in line — this year’s demand was unpredictably high, and they’re fresh out.

Austin Energy has led the nation’s roughly 600 utilities in sales of sustainable energy year after year — it’s lapped the field, more or less — yet it’s been a while since it has matched the city ratepayers’ demand for green power.

Before I or anybody else gets tempted to slag Austin Energy, let me rush to point out that the utility is shelling out nearly $700 million to bring 225 megawatts of West Texas wind power online by the end of 2007. But that will come after two years during which the utility’s green power program, called GreenChoice, has been effectively closed to new customers, despite sustained interest from Austin homeowners and commercial customers who have consistently oversubscribed the program. They’re doing great in comparison to other utilities nationwide, but if they were able to keep up with Austinites’ demand, they would be doing even better.

For more on Austin Energy — most of it highly laudatory! — I humbly submit this little article I wrote about the utility for a local magazine a year ago.

Addendum: My friend Jon Lebkowsky has just written a short piece in this vein, “The Utility of the Future,” at WorldChanging. In it he talks about some of the topics discussed at this week’s Clean Energy Venture Summit, which was held here in Austin (and co-sponsored by Austin Energy).

Category: Green & Clean