The Green, Green Grassroots of Home: Measuring Community-Based Clean Energy Market Development Initiatives in Connecticut

Community-based environmental programs are intended to engage and motivate a community’s local government, businesses, organizations, and residents to adopt environmentally beneficial behaviors by raising community awareness and leveraging community pride. In Connecticut, such a community-based approach is being applied to a voluntary program in which ratepayers can elect to purchase clean energy through their current electric utility. This clean energy voluntary purchasing program (the CTCleanEnergyOptions sm ) was launched in April 2005 by the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control as enabled by Connecticut State Assembly Public Act 03-135. To develop this voluntary market demand for clean energy, the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CCEF) launched a series of communitybased initiatives to accelerate the rate of subscription to this clean energy purchasing program by ratepayers across the state 1 . By September 2005, subscriptions exceeded total subscriptions to an earlier program that failed to deliver a sustainable subscription base for clean energy market development after 2.5 years from 2000 to 2003. The hypothesis is that the CCEF community-based initiatives jump-started the growth in subscriptions largely from the participating communities. A number of alternative hypotheses were developed to explain this rapid program startup and sustained growth. All alternative hypotheses were rejected in favor of the conclusion that the community-based initiatives had a powerful effect on jumpstarting the market for clean energy in Connecticut, delivering clean energy subscriptions at nearly double the rate of nonparticipating communities, even as community participation and subscription rates continue to climb.