Mason PUD 3 Electricity is 98 Percent Carbon Free

(SHELTON, WA) – According to a new report from the Washington State Department of Commerce, the electricity sources for Mason PUD 3 customers are 98% carbon-free.

Eighty-eight percent of the power purchased by PUD 3 for its customers comes from renewable sources: hydroelectricity and wind. Ten percent of the electricity comes from the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant in south-central Washington.

The most recent report from the Washington State Department of Commerce on power sources (the 2018 Fuel Mix Disclosure, issued in 2019) shows only two percent of the PUD’s electricity comes from “unspecified resources,” which are purchases made on the open market by the Bonneville Power Administration to help meet energy needs of the utility’s customers.

PUD 3 purchases qualified renewable energy and renewable energy credits as required by the Energy Independence Act (Initiative 937). These additional purchases more than offset any energy and environmental impacts from fossil fuel-powered sources.

Because of clean, renewable hydropower from the Columbia River system, public utilities in Washington State have a much greener mix of energy sources than other power providers in the Pacific Northwest or the rest of the United States.

Based on the most recent publicly available information, of the three large for-profit, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) that provide electricity in our state, just over 56% their energy comes from power plants run on fossil fuels. 33% of their electricity comes from coal plants, and about 23% from natural gas generators.