More on this business of sustainability.....

While attending the "energy footprint" class at St. Lukes, the option of selecting "green" energy sources came up. Monica Cannaley, a very green person who I first met while she worked for the Indiana Energy Policy group, brought up the cost of energy from Duke (in Carmel) while another lady brought up the cost from IPALCO. Here is a brief summary....

Many definitions include alternative energy sources like wind and solar. IPL offers a renewable energy option where the price per kWh, currently, is $0.00191 (about $0.002)
.

Duke energy has a different price structure:

The initial cost is $0.05/kWh. The additional blocks cost half that or $0.025/kWh.

The question immediately is: why are these two companies using such widely different energy costs. In effect Duke's cost for green power is 13x more expensive than that from IPALCO. Something doesn't make sense here.

My current IPALCO energy cost is $0.08035/kWh. The $0.00191 premium is only 2.3% additional. It isn't clear that this premium is representative of the actual cost to produce their alternative power but one note in their above statement is that they get the power from "renewable energy sources" which could include gas from the city landfill on the southside. I know that Rolls Royce is buying gas from this landfill to power about 2 MW from a gas turbine to help run their plant.

Still, there isn't a lot of transparency with the alternative energy sources.

Does all of this matter to the typical building owner? I doubt that it does unless the customer asks the question and makes a decision to not go with a lease because of what they consider to be a trivial or inappropriate answer.