What matters here is the emotional force behind the idea for a certain kind of customer. No one connected to the grid, even if they pay the surcharge, is getting 100 percent of their electricity from “immaterial” fuels. Nor is their power, on a grid that spans half a continent, guaranteed to be more local. The same terms may be used to laud an environmentally friendly, locally produced electron as an organic, locally grown tomato, but the two entities are impossibly different. Both a customer who has checked the renewable fuels surcharge box and her neighbor get the same electricity. The
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