Sustainable Westchester launches new renewable energy program

BEDFORD, N.Y. - Sustainable Westchester is asking electricity consumers - residents, businesses, even municipalities - to kick in a few bucks a month to increase the supply of renewable energy local utilities must make available.

The nonprofit is looking to lessen last year’s sudden loss of a major clean-energy initiative, Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), which allowed NYSEG and Con Ed customers to require electricity from green sources like wind and solar.

Green My Power is the new program, offering a range of pricing based on usage estimates. With a $6 monthly subscription, a typical homeowner could direct either utility to inject 1,000 kilowatt hours of clean electricity into the grid. Apartment dwellers could subscribe to the same 1,000-kWh renewable-energy certificate for $4 while certificates for homes larger than average would go for $12.

A subscription, voluntary and lasting only as long as the subscriber wants, buys renewable-energy certificates, or RECs. “A renewable energy certificate is basically the official way of accounting for the injection of clean energy into the grid by a clean-energy generator,” Dan Welsh, director of the Green My Power program, said in an Aug. 11 presentation to the Bedford Town Board.

Welsh called it “a simple way for people to get back on the renewable energy horse” following last fall’s demise of the CCA, which Welsh had also directed. Over a decade-plus run, that initiative had served more than 130,000 homes and small businesses in 29 Westchester communities, claiming a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1.5 million metric tons.

In addition to its climate impact, at a time when a volatile energy market was creating unpredictable utility bills elsewhere, CCA offered fixed-rate contracts in participating municipalities, Bedford among them. Lewisboro, where Welsh sits as a town council member, withdrew from the CCA program in 2024.

Welsh took his case to Bedford this week, outlining Green My Power. “It's actually a pretty simple program,” he told the Town Board. “People sign up, they're buying RECs. They don't need anything special to do that. They just go online and it's a simple form.”

Subscribers will have access to a portal providing a month-by-month record, Welsh said, as well as REC registration numbers and information about the impact.

“You're going to pay basically around a penny a kilowatt hour for the RECs. . . . But if you sign up for community solar in parallel, you're pretty much canceling that out and you're doubling your impact. You're having impact on both sides,” he said.

Forty-four municipalities and the county itself make up Sustainable Westchester, parent of the Green My Power program. The county organization sponsors several environmental efforts beyond the REC subscriptions, including solar-energy programs for homes, businesses and municipalities; electric-vehicle charging facilities; building decarbonization; and home energy assessments and tips to lower energy consumption.