The Oakland, Calif., City Council has approved a plan to buy clean, alternative energy for all its municipal needs, from traffic signals to the lights in City Hall. “It leads us in the direction of reducing global warming, stimulating new industry, and sets the pace for the national government,” said Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. Santa Monica and Palmdale, Calif., have adopted similar green energy plans, and other California cities are poised to follow suit, including San Jose, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. Twelve percent of the electricity used in California is green, coming from such sources as wind, solar radiation, geothermal plants, methane gas, and small dams. Since California’s energy industry was deregulated in 1998, 92 percent of the 223,000 consumers who have changed energy suppliers have switched at least in part to renewable energy, according to an official at the California Energy Commission.
