How Exactly Does APC GREEN Work?
When you look at your electricity bill you will notice that what you are being charged is divided into two main parts: a delivery charge and a supply charge for the electricity. Eversource delivers your electricity and so delivery services appear on your bill as Delivery charges. Eversource also supplies your electricity, which means they buy electricity for you and pass the cost along to you. The cost of the electricity they buy for you appears on your bill as your Supply charge.
In Massachusetts, there are three ways to purchase your Supply electricity:
1) your utility can do it for you (this is called Eversource’s Basic Service);
2) you can sign a contract with a third party electricity supplier yourself (but be careful – there are many unscrupulous companies out there!); or
3) your municipal government can negotiate and sign a contract with an electricity supplier that you can benefit from. This third option is municipal electricity aggregation, and this is what Acton Power Choice is. Acton uses the bulk purchasing power of the entire community to select an electricity supplier and to negotiate both the amount of renewable energy that is purchased as well as the price. For the APC GREEN option, Acton has selected a company that provides 100% green energy.
How Do We Know We Are Getting Green Energy – RECs
So, if multiple electricity generating companies (which are not all green) all put electricity into the grid at the same time, how do we know we are getting green energy? For every kilowatt hour that you use, the APC program ensures that a renewable energy generator puts enough power onto the grid for your usage. The program electricity supplier does this by purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), on your behalf, from a renewable electricity generator.
Your demand for REC purchases (through your APC GREEN consumption), as well as that of thousands of other REC buyers, has three impacts:
1) it increases demand for renewable energy on the Northeast power grid,
2) funds new sources of renewable power, and
3) reduces the need to burn fossil fuels for electricity generation.
APC GREEN is a powerful way to clean up our regional electricity supply
Decisions to Electrify Achieve Greater Emissions Reductions Using APC GREEN
The availability of renewably sourced electricity through APC GREEN means that decisions to electrify — for example, with electric vehicles (EVs) or heat pump technology for stationary heating and cooling — can achieve significantly greater emissions reductions than are achieved with APC’s other less green options or with the Eversource Basic Service. On average, an Acton APC GREEN household can cut its annual carbon emissions by approximately 2 metric tons of CO2 equivalents (MTCO2e), as previously noted. But for households that also electrify their heating and cooling, and vehicles, and therefore use more electricity (but no fossil fuels!), APC GREEN may cut emissions by far more than 1.5 – 2 tons annually and may be as much as an additional 6 to 7 tons. For a table of the tons of emission reductions for various actions, see the deep dive tab for Heat & Cool: Heat Pumps. Note, these estimates of emission reductions are intended as relative magnitudes and approximations, not predictions of individual results.
For additional information and answers to frequently asked questions visit the Acton Power Choice website.
Last Updated (3/10/26)
