We know that climate change is an existential threat to all of us and is frustratingly in the hands of key corporate and political interests. We are not completely helpless though. We can focus on skipping single use plastics and continuing to reduce (or eliminate) our weekly consumption of meat. We can also try to reduce our personal reliance on fossil fuel. We’re already ahead of the curve (in large part because of transportation and housing in the city) with the smallest average per person ecological footprint of any state.

One of OutdoorFest’s sponsors since our very first fest in 2014 is Green Mountain Energy (GME). And as they continue to be fans of OutdoorFest and Mappy Hour, we too, continue to love using renewable energy from GME. The thing is, once you switch over they do all the heavy lifting to untangle your energy from fossil fuels. And when the summer heat becomes unbearable every July, there’s only so long you can enjoy the ambient air conditioning from your neighbors.

Turning that lovely radiator on means you’re using energy (duh, we know) but the type of energy matters, especially as we think of our community in mass. If all 15,036 of our newsletter subscribers (that’s you!) switch over to GME, we’d offset 95,428,445 pounds of CO2, which is like planting 9,823,469 new trees, in the first year alone That’s according to the average electricity usage of households in NYC.

So How Does it Work?

GME works with CONED so you can keep your usual energy bill. ConEd still delivers the energy to your home and GME is your new energy supplier. They source the energy from renewable sources like solar and wind, and then ConEd delivers it to your home. We dove into the plans for New Yorkers and found that we can choose from Pollution Free electricity, made from 100% wind energy, and Pollution Free Gold electricity, made from 95% wind and 5% solar.

You can check out their current rates here to see what switching over will cost you on a monthly basis. It’s likely that using clean energy is slightly more expensive but considering the impact you’re making, it’s easily well worth it.