Environmental Stewardship Corner

On Sunday, October 9, some of us heard a presentation regarding electrical supply options that you can choose now. In fact, you can pick an electrical supplier that is less expensive and that uses more renewable energy sources than is currently in the mix for the supplier you most likely still have. If you switch electrical suppliers, you still will receive your bill from your current utility, but the place on the bill where you are charge for your energy, will be passed through to the supplier. After you change electrical supplier, you will notice nothing, except probably a less-expensive supply charge and a lower bill.

To evaluate your options, you can go to the website: http://www.pluginillinois.org.

We were encouraged to learn that Illinois is requiring all electricity suppliers to have an increasing, albeit still small, fraction of their supply to come from renewable sources. Currently, in Illinois, most of this is from wind turbines. However, beginning in 2016, utilities will be required to start having some of their electrical supply from solar energy. I recently selected a supplier that was more than 15% less expensive than my current electrical supplier and produces most of its energy from renewable wind energy. Also, important to me, was flexibility in my supplier. The electrical supplier that I selected does not have any guarantee period or contract period, so if I want to change my supplier, I can easily change. Selecting an electrical energy supplier with a large portion of its supply from renewable sources will help bring about cost-effective change for all and will help lessen our impact on the environment.