Keene's Christmas tree is a little greener this year.
The city has decided to spend a little extra to help the cause of renewable energy.
The Keene Sentinel's Donna Moxley reports.
(sound of the actual tree lighting: 10-9-8 countdown, caterwauling, etc)
When Santa Claus lit Keene's Christmas tree earlier this month, the number of green bulbs was no more than usual.
But the tree has taken on a symbolically greener hue.
The city has decided to take part in a program called "Green Lights,".
It's organized by the Environmental Group Clean Air Cool Planet to encourage greenhouse gas reductions.
The Green Lights program asks cities to offset the power used by holiday lights by investing in renewable energy.
Christa Koehler is a Keene city planner.
Koehler: "it turned out this something really simple, it didn't cost a lot of money, and basically it is being used as an educational tool, to say anyone can do this, whether you're a homeowner, or a car driver, or a city or company you can pretty much do your part to reduce our dependency on foreign energy and cut CO2 and energy pollution, so this is one small step and hopefully it can be even bigger next year."
To take part, Keene is buying sustainable energy credits from a Vermont company called Native Energy.
That sounds a lot more complicated than it really is.
Essentially, the city is sending Native Energy a sum determined by how much energy is used lighting the town's holiday lights.
Bill Burtis is spokesman for Clean Air Cool Planet.
Burtis: "It's not a lot of cash, it's actually quite inexpensive ... a Christmas tree the size of an average community in New Hampshire or Maine is probably going to cause emissions of about a ton."
To offset that ton of carbon dioxide emissions will cost Keene a whopping $12.
Native Energy will then pool the city's money with other income to generate clean power at a planned wind turbine site on an Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
Keene City Planner Christa Koehler.
Koehler: "You're not actually getting the direct energy that's being created. What you're doing is investing in this alternative energy, for us it's wind power, in another part of the country, but by doing that you're displacing fossil fuel usage somewhere."
And Koehler adds it doesn't matter that the money may go to companies that generate power outside the region's grid.
Koehler: "In terms of climate change or air pollution those kinds of issues don't have any boundaries ... it's a global problem"
The biggest city involved in the Green Lights program is Boston.
Bill Burtis, with Clean Air Cool Planet says Boston is paying about $250 to offset the emissions created to power all of the holiday lights on the Boston Common.
Other Northeastern cities "going green" include Stamford, Connecticut, and Portland, Maine.
The cities involved have bought their sustainable energy credits from wind power or methane power generators.
Again Bill Burtis.
"These communities all have a commitment to reducing their emissions and I think the opportunity here, the investment, if you will, is in sharing with their citizens and visitors their pride in that commitment and also in demonstrating that this is a real way that people can do something right away about global warming."
The "green lights" program is just the latest in a long list of initiatives Keene has taken to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
The town also uses geothermal heating for some of its buildings, biodiesel fuel for most town vehicles, and methane gas from its landfill to power the operation there.
Keene’s Mayor, Michael Blastos was also one of a handful of U.S. mayors at the recent climate Change conference in Montreal.
For NHPR news, I'm Donna Moxley.
