The team branded, tagged and verified blocks of power as “EcoPower” to differentiate power sources and to allow market tracking of how much green power is produced and sold. EcoPower sources included the burning of landfill gas in the Chicago metropolitan area and the work of new electric turbines (wind mills) built in Michigan’s northern lower peninsula.

The team evaluated and compared various types of renewable power sources as a component of the total generation portfolio of the power grid. This project successfully launched EcoPower Certificate, substantiation, and tracking programs in the Great Lakes region.

Through it’s participation in EcoPower certification program, the City of Chicago won the “EPA’s Green Power Partner of the Year” award. Chicago committed to purchase as much as 20% of it’s energy use from green power sources by 2005, and the team leveraged this commitment through ComEd to initiate Crescent Ridge Windpower project, the first utility-scale wind farm in Illinois (51 MW).

The team partnered with Resources Systems Group, Inc (RSG) to document actual savings and environmental improvements that result from increased proportion of “green power” in the power grid. Believing that emission reductions are underestimated when using a ‘system mix’ approach, the team recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency use a power plant dispatch ranking protocol to report environmental emissions reductions when renewable energy is introduced into the electric grid.