On its website, Green Mountain notes that it buys all the renewable energy credits from two wind farms in Texas operated by NRG Energy, the 150-megawatt (MW) Langford  farm and the 120-MW Elbow Creek farm, but Martin said the company also buys RECs of many kinds in many markets.

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There are a couple of rationales behind RECs as a tool to encourage development of renewable energy. First, they allow consumers to buy renewable energy even if renewable energy isn’t available directly to it. The second rationale flows from the first: By creating a wide market for renewable energy, RECs can support the development of more renewable energy resources. Revenue from the sale of an REC could be used to drive investment in a new wind or solar farm, and the greater the demand for RECs — the more Lord & Taylors out there deciding to use clean energy — the better the economics of renewable energy for developers.

That’s how Lord & Taylor is doing a good thing, even if it all seems rather bureaucratic.

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