Full Disclosure: EBCE Is Greener

Our products are cleaner than PG&E as well. Bright Choice had a carbon footprint of 100.75 lbs of CO2 per megawatt-hour in 2018, while Brilliant 100 and Renewable 100 are zero-carbon.

This compares to Pacific Gas & Electric’s rate of 206.29 lbs per MWh, as of 2018. The California average in 2017 was 474 lbs per MWh and the 2018 national average was 990 lbs. This makes EBCE’s basic product about 90 percent cleaner than the national average.

It’s easy to calculate your personal carbon emissions. Just sign in to your PG&E account to look at your bill, find the total electricity consumption per month (in kilowatt-hours), and multiply that by 0.1 lbs. For example, 300 kWh of Bright Choice would result in about 30 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions.To eliminate those emissions, you can opt up to our other products.

So far, about ten percent of EBCE customers have opted up to greener products — 9 percent to Brilliant 100 and 1.3 percent to Renewable 100. Most of these have been from city councils choosing the plans as the default option for their city’s customers. EBCE will be running an opt-up campaign in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in April.

The Piedmont City Council voted earlier this year to enroll all residential and municipal accounts in Renewable 100. By opting up, they said, “our community will make significant steps towards reaching the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets of our recently-adopted Climate Action Plan 2.0.” Hayward and Albany have opted for Brilliant 100 for most accounts, both residential and non-residential.

Residents in those cities, and all EBCE member cities, are still free to change their supply option to whatever they like.

Other EBCE customers have gone green by installing their own solar panels. As of the end of 2019, there were 29,905 solar customers in our service territory, about five percent of all customers. The top areas are Oakland, Fremont, and Livermore, with at least 4,800 systems each. Total generating capacity is 228 megawatts. Livermore has the most capacity, with over 44 megawatts or about 19 percent of the total, while Oakland has the most systems, with 6,700.