Region: North Dakota, USA

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In the Northeastern corner of North Dakota, the Langdon windmills stand nearly 300 ft tall and generate enough clean energy to power over 40,000 homes. The facility provides over 10% of the electricity requirements for the Minnkota Power Cooperative, a regional cooperative made up of 11 member-owner rural distribution cooperatives serving North Dakota and Minnesota.

Despite having the greatest wind generating potential of any state, North Dakota now gets most of its electricity from coal. But with the help of renewable energy credits (RECs), wind power is becoming an economically viable clean energy alternative.

This wind farm not only generates clean power, which doesn't require water for production, but also brings jobs, and preserves the surrounding land's agricultural use. Because the windmills stand on land leased from local landowners, it also brings economic stimulus to the area.

Through the REC system, if your utility can not sell you wind generated electrical power, you can buy it anyway, from projects like Langdon. Renewable energy sources are typically more expensive, and so the demand for renewable energy isn't always in the areas where it's produced. Your support of a renewable energy credits means that you are basically buying the green energy that local buyers are not. According to the EPA, RECs provide buyers flexibility in procuring green power across a diverse geographical area. This flexibility allows organizations to support renewable energy development and protect the environment when green power products are not locally available.

RECS are slightly different than carbon offsets, and are intended to address emissions associated with electricity consumption. While the process used to create, document, and validate the benefits of RECs is slightly different from offsets, your carbon footprint is reduced by supporting the credit producing project. For the travel and automotive portion of your footprint, we recommend offsets. But if you are a fan of wind energy (and who isn't!), you can support this project and our Wilton offset project, and make wind your path to carbon neutrality.

Different states and utilities already have some green power in their energy mix. That's why ClimatePath offers RECs in terms of metric tons of CO2 avoided. If you use our calculator, you can estimate the carbon impact of the non green portion of the electricity you use in your state. For this project, each ton avoided equals 1200 kWh of green energy, enough to power a typical home for roughly 6 weeks.