The City of Ithaca , N.Y., will be purchasing Green-e Energy-certified renewable energy certificates for all its electricity. These RECs will offset about 4,896 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually from conventional electricity production.

The environmental benefit can be compared to not driving 12,000,000 miles in a car, or planting 1,460 acres of trees, according to the municipality.to buy all its electricity from renewable energy sources through Integrys Energy Services of New York. It will start this month.

  Ithaca has sourced 5 percent of its energy from wind farms since 2006 and is targeting a carbon footprint 20 percent smaller than 2001 levels by 2016.The REC purchase was conducted through Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance Inc., a non-profit aggregation of power users .

In October,the City of Austin, Texas, became  the largest municipality in the U.S. to power all of its facilities using only renewable energy.  The move placed the Texan capital into the Top 10 for renewable energy buyers in the US .As of Oct. 1 all of the city’s municipal facilities subscribe to Austin Energy’s GreenChoice renewable energy.

The only local government  to purchase more green power that Austin is the City of Houston. Houston buys 438 million kwh of renewable power a year, powering 34 percent of the city’s activities and placing it fourth on the list. The City of Austin has bought about 400 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy.The energy will come from a wind farm in West Texas.

  IT giant Intel Corporation is currently the largest consumer of renewable energy in the United States. It currently consumes 2.5 billion kwh per year and has topped the list since January 2008.