Environment & Energy

especially when people are selective in the numbers that bolster their ideology "numbers don't lie", while disparaging other numbers that don't fit their ideology (edit: or their pocketbook as you rightly point out in your response below /end edit).

On accounting, I'm sure a lot of claims aren't true. But at Northern State Power (now part of Xcel Energy) my office was next door to the superintendent whose section kept track of what utilities we bought from and sold to and even what power plants they came from when we had participation deals and jointly owned units. And they are audited by the power pools and of course the other utility(ies) on the other side of the transaction have to agree with the numbers. I never heard of problems or controversies in that system (edited to add -- at that time in the 1980's, this was before the time when the market marginal pricing bullshit began that Angwin Merklin's "Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid" discusses. A book by the way that you brought to our attention /end edit).

That said, I too am suspicious that if I sign up for the "wind source" program, that the electricity I get is going to come from an increment of wind energy production that would not have otherwise occurred.

And certainly, a lot of the "carbon offsets" one reads about are dubious if not completely laughable