February 25, 2004—Five electric power companies from across the US have answered a challenge from World Wildlife Fund to become the first US power companies to support a mandatory cap on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions and confirm their commitment to clean energy. Austin Energy, Burlington Electric Department, FPL Group, Inc., Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Waverly Light and Power are joining WWF to help change the CO2-intensive electric power industry.
The WWF PowerSwitch! Challenge is for power companies to support binding limits on national CO2 emissions, and to undertake one or more of the following action targets:
- use renewables as the source for 20 percent of their electricity sold by 2020;
- increase energy efficiency by 15 percent by 2020; or
- retire the least efficient half of coal generation by 2020.
Under commitments to WWF, renewable sources of energy may include solar, wind, sustainably harvested biomass, low-impact small-scale hydropower, geothermal, and methane recovery from landfills or farms. Energy efficiency efforts may include such innovative approaches as improving energy efficiency in power production, upgrading distribution technologies, transmission optimization efforts, or reducing overall demand from customers in a service territory as part of a strategy to diminish the need for new electricity generation capacity.
