Partner Profile

Montgomery County Wind Buyers Group
Location	Rockville, MD
Organization Type	Govt. (Local, Municipal)
Percentage Green Power	10%
Organization-wide Purchase	Yes
Awards/Recognition	Partner of the Year 2004, GPLA Winner
Partner Profile Starting in 2004, Montgomery County led a purchasing collaborative of six Montgomery County Agencies and 12 other municipalities to purchase an initial commitment of 5 percent clean energy in the form of wind renewable energy certificates (RECs) generated by the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center in West Virginia. The County and its partners focused on clean energy generated locally in the County's air-shed, providing air quality benefits. In fact, the County and its purchasing partners were the first in the nation to use a voluntary clean energy purchase as part of regional air-quality planning and to retire nitrous oxide set asides. More importantly this clean energy has a direct benefit to local air-quality and health of the community. In 2006, the County doubled its commitment to 10 percent and asked its purchasing partners to join in the commitment and together are now purchasing a total of 65 million kilowatt-hours of wind power in fiscal year 2008. The County will again double its commitment, totaling 20 percent of electricity consumption from clean energy by fiscal year 2011.