US firms join forces to boost renewables capacity

Some of California's most influential firms have announced this week that they are clubbing together to promote the use and purchase of green energy in the State.

The companies have formed the Green Power Group – California Affiliates group, which hopes to promote the use of locally-produced renewable energy and the purchase of green energy using instruments such as renewable energy credits.

AMD, Apple, BT Americas, Cisco, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Intuit, Levi Strauss., News Corp, Pactiv, Patagonia, and Wal-Mart Stores make up the new group.

Reed Content, AMD fellow for global environmental health and safety, admitted that the company does not use much energy in California as its headquarters are in Austin, Texas, but explained that the move is designed to increase pressure on national policymakers as much as to achieve practical goals. "Our energy usage in the State may not be that large, but Californians are influential in national policy," he said.

Organisers admitted that currently the group does not have any measurable goals for the use of green energy in the state. However, Content explained that the coalition's main practical target in the short term is likely to be the sharing of information and best practices about green energy purchasing and on-site renewable energy technologies.

AMD, for example, does not produce its own energy as yet, but could feasibly receive pointers from other firms in the group, such as Google, which recently installed a 1.6MW solar array at its campus in Mountain View, and Wal-Mart which has also been rolling out solar installations.

The group is the third in a series of partnerships created by the World Resources Institute (WRI), following its formation of the Green Power Market Development Group (GPMDG) in the US, and its counterpart in Europe.

In the US, this group hopes to develop a gigawatt of green power by 2010. By last August it appeared well on target having achieved 738MW of installed capacity.

Alex Perera, the WRI representative who heads up the GMPDG, said that roughly half of that capacity came from the purchase of renewable energy credits, and the other half from company-owned renewable energy projects. "Green Power was typically not being used by our largest energy buyers – it just wasn't available to them," he explained. "We wanted to help change that."