Washington, DC -- Montgomery County today announced the details of its wind energy purchase to supply five percent of its energy requirements, becoming the first municipality in the region to purchase renewable energy and the largest municipal buyer of wind energy in the country to date. This purchase also sets a second national precedent: the inclusion of a wind power purchase as an ozone reduction measure in a regional pollution reduction plan mandated by the EPA.

Environmental Resources Trust, a national environmental nonprofit that promotes renewable energy, demonstrated the air pollution reductions that will result from the County's wind power purchase. This enabled the inclusion of Montgomery County's purchase in the region's pollution reduction plan, formally called a State Implementation Plan (SIP). In addition to reductions in ozone-causing nitrogen oxides, the County's wind energy purchase will displace environmentally harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that leads to climate change.

Environmental Resources Trust (ERT), a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, supported and helped to spur this precedent. ERT issued an "Emissions Avoided" report analyzing the fossil fuel emissions that would be avoided or "displaced" by wind energy production in the region. ERT found that every Megawatt-hour of wind power generated by a proposed wind plant in western Maryland would reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides by 5.72 pounds. This analysis supported the inclusion of the wind power purchase in the State Implementation Plan. Nitrogen oxide, when mixed with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the presence of sunlight, is a key ingredient in ground level ozone.

"The great thing about this plan," notes Alden Hathaway, ERT's Director of Green Power Programs, "is that a marker has been laid in the Mid-Atlantic region that purchases of renewable energy by local governments provide significant value in terms of local air quality benefits."

In February, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) approved a State Implementation Plan (SIP) for air quality improvement, which includes wind energy purchases by Montgomery County as a control measure to reduce dangerous ground-level ozone pollution caused by fossil-fuel generation. The MWCOG is comprised of representatives from local governments and state agencies in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The MWCOG SIP, developed to reduce ozone pollution under the Clean Air Act, was submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) March 1. If approved by the EPA, MWCOG's SIP will represent the first time in the U.S. that clean, renewable power purchases by a municipality will be credited for reducing air emissions under a regional air quality plan. Traditionally, the EPA has limited its approval for stationary source emission reduction measures to the installation of end-of-the-pipe controls, such as scrubbers on smokestacks.