For $10 per semester Tufts students can sign up to have their rooms powered by wind power!

How can I pay?
With check, points, or cash.

Who can sign up?
Every Tufts student, even if you live off campus.
(If you live off campus, the $10 will probably only
partly offset your electricity emissions from your apartment.)

Where can I sign up?
Currently you can sign up:
- at Tisch Library
- at Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) in the back of Miller Hall

How does this exactly work?
The Tufts Climate Initiative administers this program. We pool all your donations and then buy wind power Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs, also called Green Tags) from 3Degrees, our renewable energy partner.

What are RECs?
Green tags, also known as Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) or Tradable Renewable Certificates (TRCs), are a market mechanism that represent the environmental benefits associated generating electricity from renewable energy sources. Rather than functioning as a tax on pollution-causing electricity generators, as traditional carbon emissions trading programs do, green tags function as a non-governmental subsidy on pollution-free electricity generators.

In states which have a green tag program, a green energy provider (such as a wind farm) is credited with one green tag for every 1000kWh of electricity it produces. A certifying agency gives each green tag a unique identification number to make sure it doesn't get double-counted. The green energy is then fed into the electrical grid (by mandate), and the accompanying green tag can then be sold on the open market.

Because nuclear and fossil fuel power are subsidized and their full costs are not built into the price charged, they are cheaper than most renewable sources. The wholesale price for electricity is determined by non-renewable sources and is often less than the cost of producing it through cleaner renewable methods. This is due partially to government subsidies for the nonrenewable energy industry, and partially to a market structure that does not fully capture all social and environmental costs associated with conventional electricity generation (like air pollution, costs to maintain the military in oil-rich parts of the world, disposal costs for nuclear waste, health impacts of dirty generation, etc.) A green tag or REC represents an additional payment for producing power from renewable resources, allowing the producer to create and sell electricity at the local market price and thus enabling more clean renewable energy to be made. (taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags)

Want to know more about how Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) work?
Visit 3Degrees, our renewable energy partner.

There is an ongoing debate over whether RECs can be used as carbon credits. This is a complex issue. We at TCI feel that the standards for RECs currently do not fulfill the same strict criteria that carbon offsets have to fulfill in order to be of high quality. If you would like to learn more about this complex issue, please read our paper (pdf) on voluntary carbon offsets, or visit our carbon offsets website.